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Home / Creative Arts & Media / 古書から読み解く日本の文化: 和本を彩る和紙の世界 / 漉きによる加工：雲紙

漉きによる加工：雲紙

漉きによる加工：雲紙
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Continuing on, I will now discuss kumogami (also known as uchigumorigami) which can be said to be the king of all Japanese decorated papers. First, a layer of white paper is made and then, on the top part, a layer of dyed pulp is applied on it. Thus, once the sheet of white paper is prepared, another layer of blue paper is applied on sections of it. Here, it is a little difficult to see the colors here, but in this area, an extra layer of purple pulp was added in the vat during the papermaking process. The original sheet would have been larger but it was cut down to this size for use.
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Starting from the Muromachi period,around the end of the 14th century, kumogami started
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to be used as the formal paper for tanzaku paper strips on which waka poets inscribed their poems at formal waka sessions. An enormous quantity of these were made up until the Edo period, but kumogami itself was in use already in the late-Heian period, in the 11th and 12th centuries, and was widely used in books. Here is a page of a 13th-century book. You can see that both the top and bottom parts are purple, so a purple-only kumogami was used for this book. The book here dates from around the late 14th century
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and has a cover made with kumogami. The front cover is blue but the back cover uses purple. Here is another example, a book from circa the 16th century. While this book here has the colored parts at the top and bottom, in this one here the indigo and the purple are on the sides, on the left and the right. Continuing on, this is a book we have already looked at, the title strip (daisen) where the title appears is made of kumogami. So kumogami was used for a variety of different purposes.
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Furthermore, depending on the time period, the design of the wave-like pattern and the way the color is applied vary slightly, which means that if one memorizes these differences it is easier to tell when the book was made from the kumogami. One thing to remember is that this purple color is delicate to ultraviolet rays and the color can easily become faded and difficult to see, so one must be careful. Furthermore, there are examples of kumogami made by applying the purple to the paper with a brush not during the sheet-forming process. Additionally, over time, this example here is from the 18th century, kumogami was made using colors other than indigo and purple such as green, or this orangey color here.

ここからは、紙を漉く際に装飾を加える技法について説明し、併せてそれらを用いた書物をご紹介します。

まずは、日本の装飾料紙を代表する存在といえる「雲紙（くもがみ）」について説明します。

雲紙は、打曇（うちぐもり）、内曇紙（うちぐもりがみ）とも言われ、漉き上げた白い紙の上に、色染めした紙料を上下の部分に重ねて漉いたものです。色のある部分は紙が重層構造になっているのです。その色は藍と紫の二色が基本で、藍のみ紫のみで漉くこともありました。江戸時代の18世紀頃になると緑色や茶色、灰色など多彩な色を用いるようになります。

平安時代から息長く用いられ、料紙としてはもとよりのこととして、表紙や表紙に貼られた題名を記した題簽（だいせん）などと、幅広く利用されました。室町初期の14世紀末頃からは、和歌会で和歌を提出する際のやや簡略な用紙として、この雲紙を用いた短冊（たんざく）を利用することが定着しています。

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古書から読み解く日本の文化: 和本を彩る和紙の世界

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短冊では藍色が上で紫色が下にくるように用いるのが約束事でした。これは藍は空を紫は大地を意味しているという風に説明されています。逆は天変地異に繋がるわけですね。また極楽からお迎えが来る際には紫色の雲がたなびくと信じられていましたので、紫色が上だと死を連想させて不吉だというのですね。ですから逆に、人の死を悲しんだ歌は紫色を上にして使うことがあります。また藤や萩、牡丹などの紫色の花を題として詠んだ歌も、紫を上にしてよいとされています。いずれにせよ、紫色が上の短冊はかなり珍しいものです。こうした約束は雲紙を書物に利用する際には適応されないようです。

それでは実際にビデオで、その美しい雲紙を使った書籍をご覧ください。

ビデオで紹介されている書物

その他の例

この他の興味深い例として短冊コレクションがあります。

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This content is taken from Keio University online course
古書から読み解く日本の文化: 和本を彩る和紙の世界
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