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How to preserve your own tradition

Published: 29 Sep. 2024, 20:04

KIM HYUN-YE
The author is a Tokyo correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Watching the restless brushwork of the seated person made me hold my breath. She had a shiny wooden vessel in one hand and used a flat brush to gently paint the lacquerware. It takes full two months to complete one lacquerware. On Nov. 11, I met Shiho Saito, sitting in front of a small wooden desk and constantly applying lacquer, at a lacquerware workshop in Appi Urushi Studio in Iwate Prefecture, Japan.

She is 33 years old, and she didn’t start working in the field at first. Like any other young people, she left her hometown to find a job in the city. Then one day, while talking with a friend, she was surprised to hear, “Isn’t your hometown famous for lacquerware?” She felt embarrassed that she didn’t know much about lacquerware though her town is known for the artwork. In her hometown, there was a center where she could learn lacquerware techniques for free if she could get room and board. She packed up and returned home, thinking she would keep the tradition of her hometown. She was 29 at the time. After two years of training, she became a lacquerware maker.

Lately, it isn’t hard to find young people like Saito at traditional Japanese industrial sites. The center where Saito learned lacquer art is full of young people in their teens right out of high school and in their 20s. The same applies to lacquer production sites. All five people who are working on sap collection at a lacquer tree field in Ninohe city, Iwate Prefecture, are in their 20s and 30s.

They work with a bell on their waist to chase away bears and play music on wireless speakers. “I came to participate after hearing that there aren’t enough successors,” a young man said. “I want to pass this technique on to the next generation.”

The same goes for Tayama Studio, an ironware workshop in Morioka City in the same prefecture. At a workshop where elderly cast iron craftsmen used to work, young people in their 20s now make iron kettles using the old method of burning charcoal. This is the southern ironware, Iwate’s specialty. “The most enjoyable moment is when I feel that I have become more experienced than before,” said Hito Nagasaka, who was born in Kanagawa Prefecture. He moved to Morioka after graduating from high school. He has been making iron kettles for seven years since then.

Japan faced an aging of population ahead of Korea, and the successors of traditional industries are not found by accident. The Japanese government planted lacquer trees, which had disappeared after World War II, and began to restore production. The government provided assistance since the mid-2010s, and local cities offered training assistance for two free years of training from craftsmen. This is how to preserve tradition.