5 ms·

Japan's washi paper torn by modern life

96 points by Ultramanoid 7y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
One of the many victims of plastic perhaps?
Causality1 7y ago
Many culturally significant products and practices go down this path. I believe washi particularly shoji will eventually settle into the category of "isn't produced on an industrial scale but never stops being made" with other products such as chainmail, non-electric typewriters, swords, powder horns, quill pens, parchment, monocle, coonskin caps, cathode ray tubes, hand drills, etc.
- rwmj 7y ago
  Is anyone making CRTs? As I understand it, original broadcast CRT monitors (so-called PVMs and BVMs) are becoming rare and expensive. They are sought after by retro gamers in particular.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    That's exactly when there appears a market for building CRT's to order and to size, when they become economically viable again. It's like when vinyl pressing and/or cassette tape recording machines were pulled out from storage again. It's not so much a matter of the art being lost (well, for now), more of things not being economically viable. There's also a guy somewhere who's stocked up on diskettes and drives, there's still a large amount of devices that rely on them (e.g. in manufacturing, think stuff like weaving patterns and the like)
    - jpindar 7y ago
      Did floppy drives all have the same interface? I know there were different data formats but were the physical drives all compatible?
      - dan_hawkins 7y ago
        Pretty much yes - on the lowest level you've just got signals a stepper motor and analog signal from head(s).
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    Thomas Electronics still make CRTs, mainly for the defence and aerospace industry. https://www.thomaselectronics.com/ https://www.thomaselectronics.com/
    - Phillipharryt 7y ago
      Though of those linked it appears 2 of the 3 applications are essentially refurbishing or replacing screens in existing systems. The only application that seems "new" is the CRT HuD which I don't believe is going anywhere soon. Once the displays in older machines are replaced with LCDs (as in new machines won't include them) I assume the only application will be that HuD.
  - speeder 7y ago
    Sadly, no. I use CRT on my main computer, in my country all flat panels I seen so far are too expensive OR useless for my purposes. 1. CRT can use arbitrary resolutions, I love that, not only for retro gaming, but some modern games can reach "ultra" settings when lowering resolution a little, on a "mid-range" GPU (I own a Radeon 380X, sadly the last GPU to have analog video, I dunno what I will do when purchasing my next one) 2. My CRT contrast never bothered me, differently from the flat panels I owned, for example trying to play "superhot" and then "dark souls" same day required lots and lots of fiddling with flat panels, the settings that let me see anything at all on dark souls, made the screen flat white on superhot, fixing the settings for superhot made the screen flat black on dark souls... CRT I never felt the need to readjust contrast and brigthness after I found the setting I wanted. 3. Input lag... for most games this is not obvious, specially since lots of recent games have input lag anyway (for example I noticed a couple games check the controller status in a certain order that make all input always 1 frame late, sometimes 2 frames late if there is vsync and whatnot in the mix) but for example playing "Necrodancer" on CRT is much, MUCH easier for me. 4. This one is more theoretical, since the CRTs I own are cheap, but for a long time some CRTs could reach crazy high refresh rates. 5. "HDR", well, to be honest I never seen this either in person, but I know that some manufacturers did made some cool CRTs that supported HDR, most notably for SGI workstations that could create images with some ridiculous amounts of bits per pixel. 6. Retro gaming without expensive hardware: many, MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic, on a system that has the intended hardware instead of seeing alternating columns of pixels, you would see a transparent waterfall, there are lots of emulators with plugins to simulate those, but to make the art work REALLY right on a modern screen you need a 4k screen, expensive powerful GPU and whatnot... as weird it sounds... it is cheaper to buy an actual CRT and even an actual old console to play some games.
    - mrob 7y ago
      >MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic But handheld systems with sharp pixels used the same art techniques, and many pieces of official artwork showed game art drawn with sharp pixels (think early NES game cover art). The Sonic waterfalls even use distinct vertical lines to represent falling water, instead of a checkerboard dither pattern, which would be the natural choice if you assumed it would be blurred. Arcade games used the same art techniques too, and they used high quality monitors and RGB connections, so pixels were clearly visible.
- jefftk 7y ago
  > hand drills These are still mass produced: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/drilling-machine-manual-hand-drill-hand_60494541830.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/drilling-machine-manu...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Parchment, well vellum, is interesting. There's still a company or two producing it in the UK as all UK law is published on vellum, as it's been shown to last thousands of years. When they've looked at switching to archival paper, it's not been much cheaper, and only that it should last. Parchment also has a fair amount of natural fire resistance.
SSton 7y ago
Japanese Washi Paper making video. John Daub interviewed Washi paper master, Rogier Uitenboogaart living in Kochi Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4
ThePadawan 7y ago
If that rang a bell for you, it might be via Baumgartner Restoration [0], the excellent painting restoration YouTube channel. He refers to it as "Japanese mulberry paper" and IIRC relies on it for its light weight but reliability. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/vid...
jacobush 7y ago
There is even a photographic "film" made from washi paper: http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/ http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/
cr0sh 7y ago
When I see articles on these kinds of materials - handmade and fairly unique, but not in wide demand any longer - I tend to wonder: Are there any applications for the techniques used in the making of the materials that could be applied to other modern materials that could potentially create new uses for those materials. For instance - just spitballing - but what if a different fiber and "glue" were substituted; could a very thin "mat" of such material be made, and what could it be used for? I'm sure I'm not the first to think about this, though...
- derefr 7y ago
  I think, in this case, the pertinent question is the reverse. Could you make paper out of kouzo fiber using regular mass-produced paper making techniques? (It’d likely be smoother, and so wouldn’t have the “feel” of washi paper; but it’d probably still have the properties being discussed in the article—longer lifespan/durability than regular paper.) As well, there might be other things kouzo fiber could be used for besides the uses it’s been put to (panels in shouji screen doors, and origami paper, mostly), that haven’t been tried because they don’t occur to the artisans who grow the kouzo. Maybe, due to its length, kouzo fiber has better wicking properties than regular paper fiber, and so washi paper would make a better substrate for pH test strips, for example. Or maybe the raw fibers would make a good base for a spray insulation product (presumably in combination with fire retardants.) Or maybe they’re durable enough that you could work them into a cloth, as is done with hemp.
shaboi 7y ago
This is bit nit-picky of me, but it's a thread I've been noticing lately in some international news, so I'd like to know if anyone has observations or thoughts. In South Korea, China, and Japan (to the extent of my observations), it seems when some culturally significant norm, craft, or product begins to lose said status, partit chalked up to a result of (what tone usually conveys as destructive) "Westernization". But a significant amount of the advances (i.e., emergent products or norms that have supplanted the ones in question) themselves tend to be celebrated and attributed to the progressive trajectory of their culture & state. It's just an odd bit of nationalistic hypocrisy that gives me an itch. Of course, I do not think for a moment this is the case for everything, or that their peoples even embrace this view (as I believe to have been conveyed by the media). And I'm sure the West has behaved or.continues to behave in a similar manner, either now or (surely) in the past. Perhaps I'm completely amiss, which, in that case, all the better.
- benj111 7y ago
  From a western (uk) perspective I would say theres Americanisation going on, where in the past there would have been a diversity of opinions. In the 80/90s we seemed to look to Japan for Business/technology and culture, to Europe for food, and culture as well as America. I suppose China has somewhat filled part of the gap, but it seems to be a near US monopoly at the moment. It seems to me that being exposed to the diversity of the world is a good thing, becoming a copy of one other place not so much. This is of course highly subjective. So to answer your question, being exposed to, and picking the best bits of western culture seems a net positive, becoming a generic western country not so much. I have absolutely no idea where the balance is between 'progress' and 'tradition', and I don't even think I'd recognise the balance if I saw it. I'm not even sure if there is a balance. Perhaps we'll forever be bemoaning the loss of washi, whilst celebrating the things that replace it.
davidcollantes 7y ago
Does anyone knows if washi paper notebooks are available somewhere? Search queries led me to no where.
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  https://www.washiarts.com/accessories/gampi-handmade-notebook https://www.washiarts.com/accessories/gampi-handmade-noteboo...
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts
19870213 7y ago
Dave Bull of Mokuhankan has occasional blog posts about problems sourcing washi paper: https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_are_we_doing_part_three.html https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_ar... https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_breakthrough.html https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_... Though I seem to recall one other earlier post, but I can't find it at the moment, it was about debris/bark being mixed into the paper IIRC.

96 points by Ultramanoid 7y ago

One of the many victims of plastic perhaps?

Many culturally significant products and practices go down this path. I believe washi particularly shoji will eventually settle into the category of "isn't produced on an industrial scale but never stops being made" with other products such as chainmail, non-electric typewriters, swords, powder horns, quill pens, parchment, monocle, coonskin caps, cathode ray tubes, hand drills, etc.

rwmj 7y ago
Is anyone making CRTs? As I understand it, original broadcast CRT monitors (so-called PVMs and BVMs) are becoming rare and expensive. They are sought after by retro gamers in particular.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  That's exactly when there appears a market for building CRT's to order and to size, when they become economically viable again. It's like when vinyl pressing and/or cassette tape recording machines were pulled out from storage again. It's not so much a matter of the art being lost (well, for now), more of things not being economically viable. There's also a guy somewhere who's stocked up on diskettes and drives, there's still a large amount of devices that rely on them (e.g. in manufacturing, think stuff like weaving patterns and the like)
  - jpindar 7y ago
    Did floppy drives all have the same interface? I know there were different data formats but were the physical drives all compatible?
    - dan_hawkins 7y ago
      Pretty much yes - on the lowest level you've just got signals a stepper motor and analog signal from head(s).
- jdietrich 7y ago
  Thomas Electronics still make CRTs, mainly for the defence and aerospace industry. https://www.thomaselectronics.com/ https://www.thomaselectronics.com/
  - Phillipharryt 7y ago
    Though of those linked it appears 2 of the 3 applications are essentially refurbishing or replacing screens in existing systems. The only application that seems "new" is the CRT HuD which I don't believe is going anywhere soon. Once the displays in older machines are replaced with LCDs (as in new machines won't include them) I assume the only application will be that HuD.
- speeder 7y ago
  Sadly, no. I use CRT on my main computer, in my country all flat panels I seen so far are too expensive OR useless for my purposes. 1. CRT can use arbitrary resolutions, I love that, not only for retro gaming, but some modern games can reach "ultra" settings when lowering resolution a little, on a "mid-range" GPU (I own a Radeon 380X, sadly the last GPU to have analog video, I dunno what I will do when purchasing my next one) 2. My CRT contrast never bothered me, differently from the flat panels I owned, for example trying to play "superhot" and then "dark souls" same day required lots and lots of fiddling with flat panels, the settings that let me see anything at all on dark souls, made the screen flat white on superhot, fixing the settings for superhot made the screen flat black on dark souls... CRT I never felt the need to readjust contrast and brigthness after I found the setting I wanted. 3. Input lag... for most games this is not obvious, specially since lots of recent games have input lag anyway (for example I noticed a couple games check the controller status in a certain order that make all input always 1 frame late, sometimes 2 frames late if there is vsync and whatnot in the mix) but for example playing "Necrodancer" on CRT is much, MUCH easier for me. 4. This one is more theoretical, since the CRTs I own are cheap, but for a long time some CRTs could reach crazy high refresh rates. 5. "HDR", well, to be honest I never seen this either in person, but I know that some manufacturers did made some cool CRTs that supported HDR, most notably for SGI workstations that could create images with some ridiculous amounts of bits per pixel. 6. Retro gaming without expensive hardware: many, MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic, on a system that has the intended hardware instead of seeing alternating columns of pixels, you would see a transparent waterfall, there are lots of emulators with plugins to simulate those, but to make the art work REALLY right on a modern screen you need a 4k screen, expensive powerful GPU and whatnot... as weird it sounds... it is cheaper to buy an actual CRT and even an actual old console to play some games.
  - mrob 7y ago
    >MANY games relied on CRT pixel "bleed" and fuzzyness of analog systems to create special effects, a notorious one is the waterfalls in sonic But handheld systems with sharp pixels used the same art techniques, and many pieces of official artwork showed game art drawn with sharp pixels (think early NES game cover art). The Sonic waterfalls even use distinct vertical lines to represent falling water, instead of a checkerboard dither pattern, which would be the natural choice if you assumed it would be blurred. Arcade games used the same art techniques too, and they used high quality monitors and RGB connections, so pixels were clearly visible.
jefftk 7y ago
> hand drills These are still mass produced: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/drilling-machine-manual-hand-drill-hand_60494541830.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/drilling-machine-manu...
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Parchment, well vellum, is interesting. There's still a company or two producing it in the UK as all UK law is published on vellum, as it's been shown to last thousands of years. When they've looked at switching to archival paper, it's not been much cheaper, and only that it should last. Parchment also has a fair amount of natural fire resistance.

SSton 7y ago

Japanese Washi Paper making video. John Daub interviewed Washi paper master, Rogier Uitenboogaart living in Kochi Japan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwu1t3d6kU4

ThePadawan 7y ago

If that rang a bell for you, it might be via Baumgartner Restoration [0], the excellent painting restoration YouTube channel. He refers to it as "Japanese mulberry paper" and IIRC relies on it for its light weight but reliability. [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ/vid...

jacobush 7y ago

There is even a photographic "film" made from washi paper: http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/ http://filmwashi.com/en/products/handcrafted_films/

cr0sh 7y ago

When I see articles on these kinds of materials - handmade and fairly unique, but not in wide demand any longer - I tend to wonder: Are there any applications for the techniques used in the making of the materials that could be applied to other modern materials that could potentially create new uses for those materials. For instance - just spitballing - but what if a different fiber and "glue" were substituted; could a very thin "mat" of such material be made, and what could it be used for? I'm sure I'm not the first to think about this, though...

derefr 7y ago
I think, in this case, the pertinent question is the reverse. Could you make paper out of kouzo fiber using regular mass-produced paper making techniques? (It’d likely be smoother, and so wouldn’t have the “feel” of washi paper; but it’d probably still have the properties being discussed in the article—longer lifespan/durability than regular paper.) As well, there might be other things kouzo fiber could be used for besides the uses it’s been put to (panels in shouji screen doors, and origami paper, mostly), that haven’t been tried because they don’t occur to the artisans who grow the kouzo. Maybe, due to its length, kouzo fiber has better wicking properties than regular paper fiber, and so washi paper would make a better substrate for pH test strips, for example. Or maybe the raw fibers would make a good base for a spray insulation product (presumably in combination with fire retardants.) Or maybe they’re durable enough that you could work them into a cloth, as is done with hemp.

shaboi 7y ago

This is bit nit-picky of me, but it's a thread I've been noticing lately in some international news, so I'd like to know if anyone has observations or thoughts. In South Korea, China, and Japan (to the extent of my observations), it seems when some culturally significant norm, craft, or product begins to lose said status, partit chalked up to a result of (what tone usually conveys as destructive) "Westernization". But a significant amount of the advances (i.e., emergent products or norms that have supplanted the ones in question) themselves tend to be celebrated and attributed to the progressive trajectory of their culture & state. It's just an odd bit of nationalistic hypocrisy that gives me an itch. Of course, I do not think for a moment this is the case for everything, or that their peoples even embrace this view (as I believe to have been conveyed by the media). And I'm sure the West has behaved or.continues to behave in a similar manner, either now or (surely) in the past. Perhaps I'm completely amiss, which, in that case, all the better.

benj111 7y ago
From a western (uk) perspective I would say theres Americanisation going on, where in the past there would have been a diversity of opinions. In the 80/90s we seemed to look to Japan for Business/technology and culture, to Europe for food, and culture as well as America. I suppose China has somewhat filled part of the gap, but it seems to be a near US monopoly at the moment. It seems to me that being exposed to the diversity of the world is a good thing, becoming a copy of one other place not so much. This is of course highly subjective. So to answer your question, being exposed to, and picking the best bits of western culture seems a net positive, becoming a generic western country not so much. I have absolutely no idea where the balance is between 'progress' and 'tradition', and I don't even think I'd recognise the balance if I saw it. I'm not even sure if there is a balance. Perhaps we'll forever be bemoaning the loss of washi, whilst celebrating the things that replace it.

davidcollantes 7y ago

Does anyone knows if washi paper notebooks are available somewhere? Search queries led me to no where.

bookofjoe 7y ago
https://www.washiarts.com/accessories/gampi-handmade-notebook https://www.washiarts.com/accessories/gampi-handmade-noteboo...
bookofjoe 7y ago
https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts https://awagami.com/collections/stationery-decor-gifts

19870213 7y ago

Dave Bull of Mokuhankan has occasional blog posts about problems sourcing washi paper: https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_are_we_doing_part_three.html https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/04/how_ar... https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_breakthrough.html https://mokuhankan.com/conversations/archives/2016/07/paper_... Though I seem to recall one other earlier post, but I can't find it at the moment, it was about debris/bark being mixed into the paper IIRC.