Traditional craft
Edo Karakami
江戸からかみ
Patterned washi for fusuma doors, screens and walls, hand-printed from woodblocks in Tokyo with playful townsfolk motifs and glinting mica.
Key facts
- Officially recognised
- 13 May 1999
- Type
- Other crafts
- Region
- Kanto
- Official name in Japanese
- 江戸からかみ
- Official area (in Japanese)
- 文京区、台東区ほか７区市、千葉県／松戸市、埼玉県／比企郡ときがわ町
Paper with a shimmer
Karakami is decorated washi pasted on fusuma sliding doors, shoji, folding screens, walls and ceilings. Edo karakami reflects the culture of the city's townspeople: free, easy patterns of everyday things and seasonal plants. Many are printed with kira, powdered mica, which glints softly or brightly as the light changes. It is made in Bunkyo, Taito and other areas of Tokyo, in Matsudo in Chiba and in Tokigawa in Saitama.
Three decorating trades
- Karakami-shi hand-print patterns from carved woodblocks.
- Sarasa-shi print with shibu persimmon-tannin stencils.
- Sunago-shi sprinkle gold and silver leaf flakes by hand.
From poem paper to doors
Karakami goes back to the Heian period, when patterned papers modelled on Chinese ones were used to copy waka poems. From the middle ages it was pasted on fusuma and screens. As the Tokugawa built Edo, demand grew and the city developed its own style; a mid-Edo book of trades already shows an Edo karakami maker. Edo's old woodblocks were lost to the great earthquake and wartime air raids, and only a few makers remain.
Good to know
- Turn the lights on and off near a karakami panel: the mica pattern changes as the light does.
- Karakami also works as wallpaper or a framed panel, not only on doors.
Questions travellers ask
What is karakami?
Decorated washi for sliding doors, screens, walls and ceilings.
What makes it sparkle?
Kira, powdered mica, printed into the pattern.
Where it comes from
More crafts from the same area
Local foods from the same area
Heritage stories from the same area
Sources
We checked the facts on this page against these sources.