Hakone Yosegi Marquetry: A Timeless Craft
INSPIRATION
As someone who gravitates to the world of mosaics, I remember a sense of awe and admiration washing over me as I gazed down at the Alexander Mosaic in Pompeii, Italy. Even averting my gaze from the sea of passengers stepping aboard the New York City subway train, I’d marvel at the colorful and vibrant ceramic plaques and mosaics adorning the platform. My appreciation for the mosaic art form capable of fashioning spectacular sights from humble, unsuspecting pieces led me to the doorstep of my high school’s Mosaic Workshop class. During my final project modeled after Japanese painter Suzuki Kiitsu’s Crane and Pine Tree With Rising Sun, my expectations for the creative process told a different story than my firsthand, learned experience engaging with the craft. Rather than require perfect geometric pairings, the mosaic’s strength derived from its tesserae maintaining unique features defining local quirks: the feathers of the crane suspended in the sky appear jagged and rough against the smooth, pale blue backdrop, for instance. Each component stands on its own, bumping up against its neighbors, without compromising the mosaic’s integrity because its visual charm is itself a byproduct of layered heterogeneity that culminates in larger cohesive identity. Reflecting on my finished artwork months later, ever more absorbed in my pursuit of East Asian study with a special regard for Japan, I wondered how my mosaic craft was expressed within the vast Oriental cultural and historical landscape. Brainstorming this project weeks ago, I had an answer: yosegi, or Hakone marquetry, a woodworking craft.
INTRODUCTION
Yosegi is a flavor of mosaic art that forms geometric patterns by combining different wood types of varied texture, color, and grain. The technique assembles thin sheets of wood onto a surface to create intricate designs, serving as a decorative layer added to items such as jewelry cases, vases, and most famously, puzzle boxes. Yosegi craft showcases the natural beauty of its raw material inputs, originating in the mountainous Hakone region of the Edo Period replete with a broad set of tree species. Beyond the physical sources funneled into this craft, a rich set of factors shape the final decorative output, such as the angle at which wood is cut and the gluing techniques uniting the patterned wood blocks (Hakone Japan). Beginning in the Edo Period, the art form has expressed sixty historical geometric patterns, spanning from the maze-inspired hishi-mannji to the hourglass-shaped hineri-masu. Yosegi itself is traced back to the town of Hatajuku, which was situated along the storied Tokaido road that witnessed the movement of people and goods into the capital. In its infancy, the craft embraced basic geometries provided by specific tree colors, whose original designs were an homage to the cobble stepping stones composing Hakone’s major highways – rendering itself a symbol for the growing cultural connectivity that propagated local ingenuity. In fact, decorative products circulated widely as souvenirs sold at teahouses and hot springs (Discover Japan). These often shared a warm, gentle color palette that signaled the different tree species used in production, constituting their appeal as a springboard into the natural world.
Underlying the original designs was an aesthetic appreciation for symmetry that conveyed a harmonious cohesion, which were extended to trays, drawers, bowls, and other household items (Japan Times). As yosegi evolved, two primary production techniques emerged: the first, muku-tsukuri, assembles patterned wooden strips into larger taneita blocks. The technique begins by gluing boards together to form the base of the pattern, which is compressed and later cut into unit pattern shapes. These fundamental pieces are combined in different orientations to form a geometric pattern, and the resulting amalgamation is crimped once more to form a taneita block – with an appearance evocative of the polymerized microtubule structure that composes our biological cytoskeleton. With an aesthetic design now obtained, the patterned blocks may be carved into the desired item via a potter’s wheel, such as sake cups, wine glasses, pen holders, or trays. The second production technique, zuku-hari, leverages a wood plane to shave the mosaic block into razor-thin sheets, which are pasted onto the surface of household items. These final products, coined sashi-mono, showcase a thin coat just 0.15 to 0.2 nm wide. Craftsmen take the bound timbers, each denoting a unique unit pattern, and transform them into joint taneita whose ordering shapes the final product. The block is shaved into a thin sheet ironed and flattened onto items from boxes to plates.
One final technique, mokuzougan, inlays wood of different colors and textures into paintings, landscapes, and figures (Hakone Japan). To begin, a painting design is rendered onto a slab, whose components are to be removed for fitting by reproductions from other wooden sources. One element of the design is copied onto two stacked wooden blocks of differentiated color and grain, whose contour is carved along to yield the upper and lower components of a new board glued together. The resulting image of this hybrid is cut out and seared with a torch to smooth the exterior of its sides and integrated into the original slab, whose mirror image was scooped out for the composite. This process is repeated for each painting element, with more than ten kinds of wood frequently used for a single product. The surface of the slab is smoothed over with the removal of 50–60 one centimeter wide sheets, and later ironed and stuck onto a final surface.
WIDE SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
The craft was set in motion during the Heian period, when turnery produced from a lathe became the central attraction of Hayakawa in Odawara, at the foot of Mt. Hakone. With the arrival of a tumultuous Kamakura period that saw a new shogunate rife with external threats, trees grew depleted and artisans sought untouched lands higher up Mt. Hakone (Arts and Culture). In 1791, this burgeoning artisanal and commercial hub that lay at the crossroads of travelers was put on the map by “Tōkaidō Meisho Zue,” a series of books and prints that painted the notable sights connecting Edo and Kyoto – and Hakone marquetry was paraded as a prized keepsake of the natural beauty home to the area. Yosegi products were not only propagated along local commercial routes, but during the Edo Period, a Dutch scholar of Japan, Fissel, encountered the craft and documented his novel acquisition (Hakone Japan). In the coming decades, as growing Western encroachments pressured Japan to open itself up to international trade, a new chapter of global connectivity was heralded. At the newly frequented Port of Shimoda by foreign travelers, yosegi products grew enmeshed in these international networks of exchange, and the zuku-hari technique of pasting mosaic sheets onto common items permitted a level of mass production suited to the demands of international trade. Beyond its mounting popularity among consumers, marquetry was admired by the shogunate rulers of Japan who exercised martial prowess, drawn to the pursuit of a refined cultural prestige under their name. For instance, at the behest of the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, carpenters constructed the Asama Shrine and further developed novel techniques of joinery furniture, spurred by this patronized atmosphere of encouragement that would plant the seeds for Hakone craft (Arts and Culture).
THE LARGER BACKDROP SERVING AS IMPETUS
The yosegi craft evokes the image of a humble practitioner’s workshop secluded deep in the mountainside, where products are laboriously handcrafted piece by piece in keeping with a generational legacy. To be sure, artisans stationed in Hakone during the late Edo Period partly embody our easy framework for what constitutes older, authentic, local craft: they formed insulated artisanal communities that thrived as a testament to their place of residence, one home to a rich landscape of trees conducive to experimentation. In fact, yosegi is itself traced back to a single visionary, whose descendants today work earnestly to ensure the craft continues to be done homage and passed on. These born craftsmen of Hatajuku explain that the appropriate choice of wood, color, or combination depends on intuition, the learned byproduct of personal touch and experience (Hakone Japan). Yosegi is not a communicable technique but a cultivated identity that exists beyond words or teachings, affirming our view of craft as experience accessed through time and place. Although Hakone marquetry is a special expression of the heritage and legacy of expert artisanal communities, the craft represented a major export born of mass production that cast a wide sphere of influence.
Yosegi’s central place in the artistic identity of Hakone artisans that made ripples across the commercial landscape is a testament to its origins as the emergent technical outgrowth of state-sanctioned projects constructing venerated statues and sculptures. Consider, for instance, the statue of Amida Nyorai, designed by the late Kamakura Period sculptor Kōshun: surpassing three feet, with hands in the mudra position to welcome spirits of the dead to the Pure Land, the statue was made from Japanese cypress by applying yosegi-zukuri (The Statue of Amida). This technique of joined-block construction enables statues born of multiple pieces of wood, supporting larger-scale, impressive designs. Importantly, the joints formed from yosegi-zukuri support easy gouging of the statue’s interior, accommodating the storage of precious objects. The Amida Nyorai statue is no exception, whose inner chamber contains a letter, record of designers, and sutra (The Statue of Amida). Before Hakone-style yosegi could leave a beautiful, intricate stamp on personal items that reminded of the natural world, technical advances in woodworking were needed that felt expression in the material underpinnings of worship – rendering the craft a remnant of spiritual associations.
Yosegi craft represents the intimate customization and personal culmination of woodworking techniques long tested and tried in ornate spiritual projects. Two impressive sculptures recovered from the Fujiwara Period made of lacquered wood showcase a rounded, plump face and reserved, somber expression (Japanese Sculpture). The armature for the head is a testament to yosegi technique, composed of three wooden pieces joined with paste. This nod to joinery was a common feature of Fujiwara sculptures, whose lack of excess wood afforded less weight. Furthermore, the yosegi technique was instrumental in designing the sculpture’s head: multiple blocks are pasted together, coated in clay one quarter of an inch thick (Japanese Sculpture). These beginnings would lay the technical groundwork for marquetry on a personal scale, inspiring practitioners to offer emblems of the regional countryside to travelers along the Tōkaidō road. These souvenirs or gifts were deeply valued for their craftsmanship and clever design among commoners and merchants, and by the Meiji Period, yosegi products gained broader recognition in Japan and even abroad. Not only was its technical backdrop set in motion by the spiritual object realm, but its mounting popularity was driven by the way mainland technology was received in Japan. As novel woodworking tools and techniques sprung forth, wood was “canonized as emblematic of the new state regime” (Genius of Japanese Carpentry). In fact, the bureaucratic system resisted advancements in masonry techniques for the costly step in extravagance at odds with a Shinto outlook favoring natural materials for their perceived animism.
FINAL REMARKS
Hakone marquetry continues to evoke awe as a designated craft and emblem of Japanese creativity. Today, master craftsman Kanazashi Katsuhiro helps design the prestigious Hakone Championship Cup, a trophy awarded to the victor of a marathon stretching from Tokyo to Hakone (Hakone Japan). Yosegi products adorn households around the globe, and excite curiosity among puzzle box holders. Practitioners of the craft reconstruct old designs and pave forward new avenues of expression – and the woodworking technique of hand-cutting decorative shapes inlaid into a wooden body even carries potential for cross-cultural design entrepreneurship striving for product integration within foreign markets by seamlessly bridging different textures and grains together (Exploring the Potential of Moku-Zogan). As an enthusiastic admirer of mosaics myself, I look to Hakone marquetry as a testament to the wide sphere of influence cast by this timeless craft.
Works Cited
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