Lanterns were first made during the Muromachi Period.

(What type of a lantern is this one?) This is a "Takahari Chochin." We hang (hari) it on high (taka) position, and that's why it is called in that way, but people used to call all the lanterns that are hung on high position as "Takahari Chochin" in the early days. Back then, it is said that when making a raid, Uesugi used to put candle in the lantern, put his family crest on it, and used it like this. Takahari Chochin has always had this shape, and the family crest is usually put on and is placed in front of the gate. (Do they have a white background?) Yes, of course. A black crest on the white background. (Were they also used during the battles in the early days?) Yes, along with the painted family crest. (But the lanterns basically used for the light?) I think they first were the light, yes. Lanterns were first made during the Muromachi Period, and people held torches far back in the Kamakura Period. You see period films in televisions, right? When you see them, you'll find out that people in the Kamkura Period held torches in their hands. When you search the bibliography, they say that lanterns come from the Muromachi Period.

I still put the ancient candle holder inside the lantern.

(What are those red ones?) Oh, they are red lanterns. (Red lanterns we often see in restaurants?) Yes. I think they give out these atmosphere in where the customers can feel relaxed to come in. And I also think that the color red stands out, yes. In that sense the colors used for lanterns are red and black, and a color of paper itself. These would be basic colors. Besides that, even though we add a tiny bit of other colors, we don't use other colors for lanterns. (Is that light inside now electric?) It is electric. But the funny thing is that I still put the ancient candleholder inside the lantern, because it�s one of the indispensable parts. Putting on nothing like that would be better. Because if there�s a candleholder, someone might light a candle and the lantern might be burned, which is dangerous. It should be taken away, but if I extract something that has always been there, some might say, "how come there is no candleholder here?" I can't be pretty sure.

There are about 40 people who paint in Tokyo today.

(Was your father also a lantern maker?) We have been always been lantern makers. We didn't paint the lanterns, but rather had the form as a wholesale dealer. (What is the name of the store?) We are called the "Ooshima-ya Onda" and Ooshima-ya is our head family. They don't exist anymore, but their 7th generation is making lanterns at a place of ten minutes ride from here. Like that, there are several stores with the name of Ooshima-ya, but we added our own name after that because we wouldn't get it if it only had the head family name. Well, Ooshima-ya is very famous and is the mainstream and the distinguished family in the field of lanterns, yes. (How many lantern makers exist today?) Well, let's see, how many organization members are there in Tokyo today? This is not a kind of a job that expands, so there used to be about six organization parties in the past, but only about half of that exist today. We belong in the organization of lantern makers in central Tokyo, which are Taito Ward, Arakawa Ward, Bunkyo Ward and Chuo Ward, and here gathers the most of the numbers of the lantern makers. There are about 40 people who paint in Tokyo today. The job of the lantern makers in Tokyo is painting lanterns rather than pasting them with paper. I wonder if there is one store in Tokyo that does pasting. People usually think that pasting is the main job for the lantern makers, but ones in Tokyo paint the names and the family crests as their main work, and pasting has been a specialized division of labor since the early days. That requires materials and physical power. Lanterns come from Mito today. Maybe they produce Japanese paper around there and the domain of Mito may have recommended to produce them. (Mito lanterns?) Suifu lanterns. (Really?) Yes. (Is Suifu the name of a place?) Yes, yes. We call the lanterns by their place name, like the Odawara lanterns. They are also called as the Sumiyoshi lanterns. (What are the characteristics of the Odawara lanterns?) They are really small lanterns, like the ones there with no waist and they can be fit inside your pocket. Those lanterns are the easiest to make. So there are many similar shapes of those with various land names left, but somehow the Odawara lanterns are the most famous above all. In the old days, it was said that while going through Hakone mountainous area, if you had a lantern the frame of which was made from sacred tree, you wouldn�t be assaulted by robbers. They sold these lanterns with this saying, and that might be why they still exist today. The mountain path is steepest there around the Hakone pass, yeah.

The name is really simple. Haha:

There are three kinds of Yumihari Chochin. Round ones are temaru-chochin, egg-shaped lanterns are goyo-yumihari chochin, and the long ones are called naga-yumihari chochin. Naga-yumihari chochin have 4 different kinds of its thickness, with extra thin, thin, medium thick and extra thick, but their length is all the same. The name is really simple. The holder of the yumihari chochin is shaped like a bow (yumi) and looks like as if it was stretched (hari) by that, so it is called yumihari, and takahari chochin is called because it is hang (hari) on high (taka) position. They have the same length but their diameters are different. They differ by about a centimeter, with the thickest one with about 14 cm, then comes 13 cm, 12 cm, 11 cm, and they are divided in groups like that. (Is that the common way of dividing the lanterns nationally?) This is the way done in Tokyo, and this thick, long one is called Edo-hari in Kyoto. The thinnest is called "Iki" in other words �being dandy�, which firefighters used. The brown one you see over there with "nagumi no hashigo" written on it is of this type. But this extra thin one is not commonly used. Medium thick lanterns with the diameter of about 13 cm are mostly used in common. (How do you call their lengths?) There was once a time when we could not use shaku. This is 1.5, so we called it 15 go. 15 go 7 gata is the way we call it now.

So if you just keep on doing the process, you start to see what the teacher is really doing.

(Where did you train yourself?) At the Ooshima-ya in Namidabashi. (What kind of training was it?) Training these days is not really hard, yes. I had a good teacher, so he taught me pretty easily, haha. (Was that a painting training?) Yes. You know there are black frames at the top and the bottom of a lantern, right? There are many parts that are attached to them, and my very first job was to put metal fittings to those parts. Besides that, there was a job in which I paint in the sketch the teacher drew. There are many ways in painting this, but painting this side is really hard while the other side is easier when we paint manually. And painting the top is rather easy compared to that of the bottom of the lantern. So what I do is to paint the easier side first, then flip the lantern upside down, which would make the open side easy to paint. Then I paint that to finish, and I think that is the fastest process. Next I learned the crest. Crest might seem difficult to draw, but most of them are shaped round. Round shape is the basis, and then we just split the circle to paint the patterns, and you know that you will get 6 even parts if you divide the circles by radius, right? But if you work the processes, they can be divided into 5 equal parts, and there are more ways of doing that. We used a bamboo compass to divide the circles, but I just had to get used to using it to be adept at it, because lanterns have uneven ridges. But if you keep on working them, you'll get it. People often say that we have to see to learn, right? This is not something that you will manage to do if you are just taught, hahaha. Your skill itself has to be as high as the teaching level, or else you won't get it. So if you just keep on doing the process, you start to see what the teacher is really doing. So you can only absorb the skills at times when you begin to understand what you are doing. So it is not that masters don't teach because they don�t want to, but rather they don't teach because it's impossible for us to understand (at the early stage.) Once you get to a certain point, you will understand the skill. But the improvement will be faster if you are taught than if you are not taught. I used to have two teachers on me, and I felt that encountering a good teacher is the most important thing, because I can't evaluate myself. When I think back at the two, who are both dead now, the second was really a good teacher. He didn't teach me anything when I was young, but begun to teach me many things in his late years, and I felt that things are pretty miserable when there is a clear difference in our skills, haha. (Have you ever been taught from your father?) We were different in the business, and he didn't paint. (But he is also making lanterns?) Yes, he is making lanterns. I hear that our business started around Ansei (the late Edo Era). I think they pasted lanterns with papers in the early days. It is difficult to stand as a business today if we do both pasting and painting, because even the pasting itself is a hard job. Today pasting is done as a part-time job by the farmers in their off season. So the future looks pretty harsh and dark. I heard that the number of people specialized in this field are increasing, but this is a summer job and we don't make a lot and store them from the winter season. I heard that there are such difficult points.

So people who wish to paint them freehand don't have the opportunity to practice that.

We change the color of the lanterns used in Sanja Festival annually, and make about 5000, 6000 of them. (Can you paint all of them freehand on time?) But we used to paint them with our own hands before. We allotted a portion of the whole amount of work to each and painted the lanterns with our hands. So it was good and effective when they just painted one after another in the first writing practice, but they all became print outs today, so people who wish to paint them freehand don't have the opportunity to practice that. (There is no place to study?) All the simple things turned into machines. When I was young, we drew by our hands, so we adjusted the balance between right and left to write that. I needed to write ten of that to get myself on the roll, haha. The word "tomoe" might look like an easy word to write, but easy, spacious words are rather more difficult to get the balance and the atmosphere than packed, difficult words. Painting the swallow tailed butterfly is pretty troublesome because many steps need to be taken one after another, but once you memorize the order of the process, it is not that hard.

The words on the lanterns and the Senja-fuda characters are similar in the use of their brush, and their thickness.

(Are there many forms of a character?) Yes. The most basic is the Edo character. According to some book, Edo character is a character originated in the Edo Era, and Kantei style from the Kabuki is the first of all within that character. I hear that Kantei has changed its style from the one called Oie-ryu, which was used by worriers and in which they wrote letters simply. Kantei style was used to write the scripts of Kabuki and the thick letters on a signboard. I heard that people used thin cursive to write the words of the script. That became the root of the characters like the Sumo characters, Senja-fuda characters and Yose characters, which is the one used on the signboards of vaudeville theaters. All these included are what we generally call the Edo characters, but in a way, the only character that is acknowledged today is not the Kantei style nor the Yose characters nor the Sumo characters, but is Senja-fuda which is pasted on the Buddhist temples. These are not liked today, but they used to be a stylish leisure of the people of Edo, and they don't exist in Kansai or other places. Words written on that is called and recognized in a way as one of the Edo characters. Characters like the Kabuki, Yose, and Kantei obviously exist in Kansai too. Lantern makers used to use the Senja-fuda characters in writing in the words on the lanterns. The words on the lanterns and the Senja-fuda characters are similar in the use of their brush, and their thickness. Also in how they stop the brush when writing. But the clear difference is that words written in Senja-fuda characters must be fit into this square line that is regulated. You can begin and stop the writing of the brush, but just cannot be brushed off. It has to be stopped like this (left), and has to be stopped on this side too (right). There are fairly no restrictions in lanterns. There are only slight differences, and besides that, the use of the brush is similar. When people come to me and order me to write the words in Edo character, I just interpret that they are talking about the Senja-fuda characters, and we write it that way. But if I am to make a distinction, I'd say that characters used to write on lanterns have different brush-off pattern, so I'd call it a Chochin character.

In the writing class of the early days, I think the old people today know that people often said, "don't do the Chochin-ya!"

We use many different kinds of characters to bring the variety out, but basically the words that are painted big on the front of the lantern are drawn with Edo characters, which is a Chochin character. I get other orders from people to make a lantern written in the Kantei style to be used during the play, and one written in Yose character to be used at a vaudeville theater. Yose character are written in Sumo character, and we do right thick but as for the difference between these two characters, we write Sumo character with one stroke with the thick brush, since we write on a place that is flat. A lantern has many ribs and it is also shaped round, therefore the ink drips if it used more than necessary when we write with one stroke. The ink just gathers at the rib and flow out, so we don't write in a stroke. Drawing the sketch and painting it in is the skill used in making a lantern. In the writing class of the early days, I think the old people today know that people often said, "don't do the Chochin-ya!" (I never knew that!) You didn't? (I am not that old.) I see, hahaha. Well, that was how the lantern was seen. "Don't do the Chochin-ya" is not a discriminating term for us, but it is in the world of writing.

But lanterns have white background, so things have to be the opposite for that.

Not just painting the words, but painting the family crest is also commonly associated in lantern making. You know there is "moncho" (crest album), right? Moncho is white painted on black, because the background color of the montsuki (kimono with a family crest) is black, and therefore white is painted on top of that. But lanterns have white background, so things have to be the opposite for that. But it's not just exactly the opposite from that of moncho. (No?) No. This is a crest called Maru-ni-katabami, which is the most common and basic. This is white painted on top of a black ground, so the crest on a montsuki is done with this. It would be the opposite for lanterns, so this white part would be black. And this part inside the surrounding circle would also be black if it is to be just the opposite, but here comes the difference for lanterns. I was taught from my seniors not to paint this part. Once every month, this assembly called the Choken-kai is held, and our seniors teach us many various things there. This has been going on for quite a while. (Even you go there and learn?) Yes, yes. There are many more things for me to learn, haha. (You don't paint pictures?) As for pictures, 20 or 30 years ago, we had a custom to present those who opened their own shop with a lantern half as large as a tatami (a straw mat used in Japanese room.) And we painted a treasure boat and wrote various letters such as �ooiri� (which means having a lot of customers) and a name of person whom we presented it to. I know some craftsmen in our industry still engage in this drawing, but for my part, it�s too much for me, yeah.

For making lanterns used in Bon festivals, I rub down the ink stick myself because the luster is better with ink.

(Do you write with ink?) You know an Atari-bachi, right? It is an earthenware mortar. I buy the chipped pieces of the ink stick they use in writing, and put them inside the mortar, pour a bit of water in, and grind them hard with a ladle. I used to grind them for about an hour, making ink for an amount I use a day. Today the quality of the paint has been improved. For making lanterns used in Bon festivals, I rub down the ink stick myself because the luster is better with ink. (Do you lay the ink used in ukiyoe dead?) Yes, I think they are left untouched to get the top clear layer. Maybe. That is why that smells. Lacquer smells very bad. (Is this the Indian ink?) This is liquid paint mixed with Indian ink, so that is why it has no luster.