KOBAYASHI "Hake" FACTORY/CREATOR

History: Since my grandfather's generation. My grandfather was born in 8th year of Meiji-era. In those days, you start the training from 15~16years old, and you became independent when you are middle of 20's, that's what I heard. If the factory's been here since when my grandfather was 25, say, about 100th year since the foundation. (In Ikenohata since that time?) That's right. 3rd generation sounds kind of old, but for example this brush store I know, was started by this person who came out from Kyoto in Genroku-era, and the store is still there. They don't manufacture the brush anymore though. They mainly do wholesales and other sales of the brush. Craftsman who makes this kind of brush for a paperhangers are not so many, I'm not sure if there are more than 5people. That's how this business is. My elder brother's son started the training this year though. (How old is he?) 25 I think. He was on some other business for 2~3 years, but maybe he saw something better in his parents' business.

My father was born here. Nowadays, many office workers live here, but in old days, this place was called Ikenohata Shichikenchou and at that time there were about 5~6 craftsman who manufactures brushes, that's what I heard. Here Ikenohata , Nezu, and Sendagi is generally called craftsman's town. In those craftsmen were about 20people who manufacture brushes. But as the time goes on, because of demands for a larger place, and too much dirty works, they moved to some other areas such as Sumida district or Adachi district.

(Watching your father's work?) Yes, that's right. I graduated middle school, and trained while I went to school at night, when I was about 15 years old. But that 10years, I felt like I was living for free, and I didn't have any guts also. Well, I was playing around though. It was when I had my first baby after the marriage that I seriously started to work. But I was trying to imitate my father's work. My father died in age of 87, and he slapped us during the training, well, that's how the training was like. (Any craftsman at that time?) No, not that I know of. I remember when I was little, there were about 2 young workers, but maybe they didn't go well with my dad, or they didn't agree with my father's way of doing the work, younger one left in the middle. At same time, brush no longer matches the needs of era.

Using the hair of the animals everyone are familiar with. Horse's mane, body hair and tail hair, raccoon dog's body and tail hair, deer's body hair, goat's beard and body hair. (Don't need long hair?) Not really. When making them into products, for example this one is about 5~6cm, we just cut them. We use the long hair to secure the spring it has. (Is there materials available?) Since they are materials from nature, the quality of the materials are not as good as before, but still, there are people who supply these to us. Horse's hair and raccoon dog's hair, the ones from Japan are the best ones. In my father's era, there where many horses for military use, and I also used to see many horses for agriculture in farmhouses. So it used to be easy to supply the horse hair, nowadays, I don't see horses so often. But still these materials do come in. I wondered where they come from. This is only my guess, but the materials are of horses that were thoroughbred but not fast enough to compete in the races. These thoroughbreds are not born in Japan, but I think when they live in Japan their hair become like hair of Japanese horses. High temperature and high moisture, cold in winter, humid and hot in summer, when living in this kind of climate, the thoroughbreds will have an hair that are like Japanese horses'. (Killing animals?) No, only the animals died at last. (Why?) For example, tails of horses. The tails for horses are like hands for us. They have to have them. If we take them away from horses, it is same as cutting off the hands from us. (Will the hair re-grow?) But the hair we need must have its tip. Writing brush craftsman needs much more delicate materials than we the brush craftsman do though. The tip of the hair, there is only one in each hair. To describe this in a easy way, for example there is hair from baby. Once you cut the downy hair, even though they re-grow, the tip will not become sharp, it will get flat. Hair with sharp tip is what we need. So its only once in their life. That's how it is. There are many styles of types that could only be written with the brush that uses baby's soft hair.

You know the raccoon dog's hair tips are black, and white inside?. That part is fine, but the part in the hair that is close to the root of the hair, that part is much thinner. Same thing could be said in horses' hair. Usually, the hair will become thicker as it becomes closer to the root of the hair. The hair of animals that are dog type, they tend to have hair that are thick in the middle and thinner to the root. This characteristic for us is material's weak point. If we don't support that part well, the product will not be strong enough. But raccoon dog's hair tips are good materials. (Are raccoon dogs expensive?) Yes they are expensive. (Price orders?) Most expensive one is raccoon dog. Then the tails of horses. Uses of the materials are different depending on hairs' thickness and length. Paperhangers who will use our brushes will use the right brush depending on their purpose. There's a brush for painting large area, and a brush for delicate lines. For each use, they change the brush's thickness. If the hair is soft, we do this work called 'Koshitsuke' to make it thicker so that brush will have a strength.

There are seven items which are designated as traditional industrial art by Tokyo. We don't manufacture all seven kinds of brushes. We mainly manufacture brush for paperhanger. There are craftsman who makes brushes for lacquer, and brushes for woodprint. But unfortunately, they can't earn enough money to live only by manufacturing one kind of brush, so they make most of the kinds. (Mr. Kobayashi only manufactures brush for paperhanger?) Yes. I'm doing it together with my elder brother. My brother is in Narashino of Chiba and he would bring the brushes he manufactured in there. I manufacture brushes here and sell them to my customers. In 30's of Showa-era, people were using brushes for bookbinding still. They used brushes to put the glue on and made a book. It was my favorite era. But soon, they started to use machine instead. About 20percent of our products are going to bookbinding though. They use good tools. In old days when my father was still training, there were needs of brushes for paperhangers. Now, the bookbinding business are declining, so paperhangers are again increasing. The techniques and know-how of making brushes could be applied when making paperhanger's brush and bookbinder's brush.

When me and my elder brother started the training, all the demands where gathered within Yamanote line. Customers who use our brushes were gathered in small area. But soon the demands spread all around Tokyo, and then Kanto district, and now, all over Japan. It sounds much better that we have customers all over Japan, but we have to do that. The workers are not gathered in Tokyo anymore. In old days, we delivered the products with bicycles or motorcycles. Other side of Tokyo University is Koishikawa. In Koishikawa, factories are build densely, and they often appeared on novels. Bookbinding factories were located in that area. You take a bicycle for 30 minutes and there's your customer, that much close. Now, most of the products are delivered by trucks.

If the small steps are counted, it would be about 100 in its process, I think. (Takes many days?) Yes it will. So when the customer comes up to me and said they need one today, we can't make it. You call it preparation beforehand, and we the brush makers also need to prepare and arrange our materials beforehand. Order should be like 40 to 50 in one week. And some preparations need to be done also. (Wood parts too?) That we order and receive from Kiso. We use Japanese cypress. But we also use woods from Canada. The Japanese cypresses are decreasing. Sometimes we have to use something like plastics too.

Its when the customer who used our product tells us 'nice work'. It's not always like that though. The brushes in our store, they are expensive. Beginners start with the cheapest tools, in any tools. And when they get better, they feel this feelings that they are not quite satisfied with the tools. Then they ask their master or senior about it, and they come to our store looking for a better brush. It's expensive when you buy 'em in our store because they worth twice as much as other brushes. But once they use our products, they come back to us saying their work improved. That's when we feel the enjoyment of our business. (Beginners cannot understand your works?) Yes. If workers use our products from the beginning, they would think our products are how all the brushes are. They will find the difference once they use other brushes though. (Is there brush for training?) For pupils of our customer's shops, the masters give their pupils old brushes which masters don't use anymore. When the pupils start with cheaper brushes that are made by different craftsman than their master's, when they get better, they would have different point of views toward their tools. For economical reasons, its better for pupils and masters to use the same tools. Also, teaching a viewpoint for their tools is part of the training. Us too, we were not allowed to use our father's tools. We bought our own new tools when we got a pocket money or a pay. But we couldn't buy good tools with that. When we are not good enough, that tools would do it. One's getting better when they feel that they are not quite satisfied with their tools. I too, felt that. Before that, when I was young, all I wanted for a customer was to buy better and expensive brush. But once I understood the makings of the brushes, I stopped recommending expensive brushes when customers don't really need one. If I recommend expensive brushes every time, customers would not understand nor be satisfied when they really need better one.

(unclean work?) Every time I do Haimomi or Ash rubbing, I have animal hair and ashes all over my body. Ashes, we call it Haimomi(Ash rubbing)and the ashes are made by steaming and burning the rice's chaff. We use the ashes for getting rid of oils that are on animal's hair. We need to take the oil off or else it would not contain glue well. (Kekko(great) kedarake(hair all over) neko(cat) haidarake(ashes all over)?) (This is Japanese proverb which makes fun of something that is greater. This means 'Appears clean on surface but is dirty with hair and ashes on back'. In this case, is making fun of Brush making as dirty work with hair and ashes.) That Haimomi I heard is the root of that proverb.

It takes couple of years just to handle animal hair. In old days, I heard there was craftsman in brush factory who was moving from one master to the other just with one comb. Just like kitchen knife of cook. Combs are that much important for brush factory. (Different comb depending on animal?) Different, but not because of animals, we need to use the different brush in steps of our works. In summer, we boil animal hair in the huge iron pot for 4 to 5 hours. By doing it, animals hair will have gloss, and the curls in the hair will become straight. Then we dry them. It's better if we dry them with sunlight, but recently, there's many buildings constructed around here and we don't have enough sunlight. So we do most of that work in Narashino. In old days, during summer, all we do was that boil and dry work. Now, we use some dryer kind of tools though. Once we do this kind of work(selecting and separating the hair depending on the length) we do this work all day long. (Work of feelings?) Feeling, or probably getting used to it. For a customer who needs hard and strong brush, we only use long hair. Shorter the hair is the weaker the brush becomes. But shorter hair have better condition on hair tips. This balance between strength and hair tip condition is important. If we only consider the hair tip and use the short ones, the brush will lack its strength. In old days my father's era, when animal hair salesperson comes, my father would ask where the hair is from. 'They are from Suwa' the hair salesperson answers. The horses of Suwa area are the best. But my father would reply 'Oh no, so this years' are from Tohoku area(north east)?'. Now, we really want these Tohoku ones. There was an era which you could ask for better materials. (Horse hair are better if the horse meat are good?) Better hair probably means better meat. It's product of nature, so the ones grown up in cozy climate are good.

It takes less time to make a new brush. For customer who used the brush for a long time, they value the hair part more than the wood part. They ask us to completely restore the conditions of the hair. We change all the wood parts though. We break them, and mix in some new hair. Making new brush from the beginning is much easier because we can just follow the complete flow of brush making. That's much easier. But answering the needs of customer is our business too.

This past 20years or so. Many of the old western art works are damaged. There were no way to fix those, until they found or invented a way to repair the art works with Japanese paper. People from west come to Japan to study in university of fine arts, and research institute of cultural assets. At the same time, paper hangers of Japan to west to teach their skills. So many of the technical experts of Japan go to the art museums of France and England, and pass their skills onto the people in that country. Those people who learned the skills from Japanese experts also pass their skills onto other people. Japanese technical experts such as the researchers of cultural assets and professors of universities brings with them our products, and sold them, or made their students in over seas buy our brushes. In Tokyo, there still is paperhanger who only repairs works which are at the level of national treasures or important cultural assets. Mounting is, or repairing over half of the work means to fix the work which are already done to pass them onto the next generation. They've been repeating that. Creating something new really is not a work of paperhangers. I think that is the reason why techniques of mounting has been inherited to today.

This old and short brush for backing was made by my father before the war, but as they use this, middle part of the brush's hair decreases and the side part of the brushユs hair are curved away. The brush with the middle scooped away, paperhangers cannot do backing well with that. So we shave the longer part for them. (That kind of repairing too?) Yes we also do that. But when I said 'My father died', they promised us 'when we are finished with this, we will give this back to you for your father's memory'. Craftsman who makes tools for other craftsman, like us, we leave nothing (products made). If we want the things we made back from our customers, we must make a promise beforehand. And we must ask them in good timing or else they'd say 'oh that? We threw it away' just like that. People take care of their tools while tools are still usable, but once the hair of the brushes start to come off, they are no longer usable and are thrown away.

Hair is wrapped around by Japanese paper like Obi(belt for Kimono), but wrapping only with Japanese paper is weak. So it is covered by the bark of cherry blossoms tree, only on a side though. That makes a great difference. It's really strong. Bark of cherry blossoms tree is often pasted on wood works and is called cherry blossoms' bark work. (Thread?) Silk thread. We usually call them Shamisen(traditional Japanese three-stringed banjo-like instrument) thread. It's strong. Even if it is soaked in water. It becomes weak when rubbed though. So to prevent that, the thread is dig into the hair. (Three gutters always?) Yes. When the brush is wider in width, gutters are shifted a bit. When the brush is soaked into water, the hair tries to come out, with great strength. That's why we need to bind them together in three places. The handle is quarter grain.

Beat brush(Uchi-bake) 　KB8 Backings of hanging screens, they are glued together with really thin glue, because it will be rolled. If we use thin glue in ordinary way, it will easily come off. So we strike the cloth underneath and paper to glue them harder. It's like combining cloth and paper into one thing. So in old days, when we walk in front of paperhanger's store, we used to hear this striking sound just like hammering sound. Lately there aren't so many craftsman who does good work like that. Other brushes are from 10,000yen to 30,000yen. But this one, costs 100,000yen at least. If not used frequently, even if the young craftsman purchase this brush, this could be used for lifetime though.