Kumogami

Now we will look at various techniques to decorate the paper at the sheet-forming stage and look at books that make use of them.

Kumogami – Cloud-Patterned Paper

We start with kumogami (“cloud-patterned paper”) which can be said to be the king of all Japanese decorated writing papers.

Also known as uchigumori and uchigumorigami (“cloudy paper”), kumogami is made by layering dyed paper materials in the top and bottom sections of finished white paper. The parts of the paper with color have therefore a multi-layer structure. The standard color combination was indigo and purple, but there are also examples with only indigo or only purple. Starting in the 18th century, in the Edo period, various other colors such as green, brown and gray also came to be used.

History of Kumogami

Kumogami has been in use continuously since the Heian period not only as writing paper, but also to make book covers and title slips (daisen), which were pasted on the front cover. As of the early Muromachi period, in the late 14th century, kumogami became the standard paper to use at waka gatherings for tanzaku, narrow strips of card on which poets inscribed the poems that they composed.

Tanzaku Strips

It was standard practice to use indigo in the top section and purple in the bottom section of the tanzaku strip. The explanation that is usually given is that the indigo represents the sky and the purple represents the earth, so the opposite configuration (purple at the top and indigo at the bottom) would represent a disruption of the natural order (such as natural disasters).

Another theory is that since people at the time believed that a purple cloud would come from paradise to retrieve people at the time of their death and take them to Amida’s paradise (the Pure Land), users would associate purple at the top with death and misfortune. That is why tanzaku strips inscribed with poems lamenting someone’s death will sometimes have purple at the top instead of the bottom. Sometimes, purple was placed at the top to match the text to be inscribed. For instance, purple at the top was used for poems on or mentioning wisteria (fuji), Japanese bush clover (hagi), peonies, and other purple flowers. However, tanzaku strips with purple at the top are rare. Interestingly, these conventions do not seem to have applied when kumogami was used in books.

Now, please watch the video to view some books made with the beautiful kumogami.

Books introduced in the video:

• Goshūiwakashū dankan (Yahata-gire),Middle Kamakura period
  Click to see the image and information
• Itsukushima mōde-ki, Kōō 1 (1389)
  Click to see the image and information
• Eiga no taigai [Essentials of Composition], mid-to-late Muromachi period
  Click to see the image and information
• Kin’yōwakashū, Early Edo period
  Click to see the image and information
• Yamatonokuni-harimotogou-harimichinoyashirono-mimaeni-tatematsuru-uta, Middle Edo period
  Click to see the image and information

Another example

Here is another interesting book, a collection of tanzaku.

• Tanzaku Tekagami (“Small Mirror of Tanzaku”)
  Click to see the image and information