漉きによる加工：羅紋紙・飛雲紙

Moving on, I will now explain another method that involves lightly laying dyed paper onto a finished layer of white paper, as in the kumogami at which we looked earlier. First, starting with the item in the middle here, it is an extremely rare example. You should be able to see this pattern over the fibers that looks like many tiny waves; it is called ramonshi. The ra in the word ramon means “silk gauze,” and it is so named because the finish resembles the weaving pattern of thin silk. This style can only be seen in decorated papers from the late Heian period (11th-12th c.) and is exceedingly rare.

This piece here is merely a small fragment taken from a large book but even so it is incredibly valuable. Besides ramonshi, another type of decorated paper that can only be seen in 11th and 12th century examples is the paper known as tobikumogami (“floating cloud paper”). Here is an example. This, too, was made by laying small scraps of dyed paper over white paper as to resemble clouds floating in the sky. In early examples, the clouds were quite large, but as time passed the clouds become smaller and smaller. This example has rather small clouds and, like the ramonshi paper example, it is just a fragment of a larger book.

Also like the previous example, it is exceedingly rare and very valuable despite its small size. Finally, there are some examples of the two techniques combined, that is, the cloud shapes have a ramonshi texture. Like the other examples we have seen so far, these can only be seen in Heian-period items and are extremely rare.