“We may simply have lost our appreciation of hand-crafted goods.” Igarashi san has been making chochin paper lanterns in his little shop for his entire life. His pop too, and his grandfatherand great grandfather and even great, great grandfather. The tools & hardware that surround him today, in fact, have outlasted his ancestors, their wooden surfaces worn smooth with age. Since the start of the Meiji age ( 1868 - 1912) Kanazawa voters have been buying Igarashi chochin from the store, in the guts of old Kanazawa’s merchant district, near the back of the castle. The shelves are stacked high with superbly decorated lanterns - colourful spurts of colour peppering the dusty confines of the little workshop.

Chochin lanterns have a reasonably long history in Japan - there’s evidence of them being used in temples in the 10th century - and were used primarily as a movable method of lighting. Only often used inside, they usually hung outside a house, temple or business or else in the entrance, prepared to be suspended on a pole and carried before anyone going out at night. Igarashi-san reckons that at a previous point they were so commonly used there would have been been around 40 or fifty chochin shops just in Kanazawa. These days there remain only himself and one other local craftsman in the trade and the other fellow (Matsuda-san) has long since diversified, making traditional umbrellas his mainstay.

Making a chochin is a fiddly, fairly delicate procedure despite the attractively simple appearance of the end result. And, when asked what are the most vital qualities in his profession Igarashi-san replies, his bright eyes dead major, “patience and concentration.” The average sized lantern according to Igarashi-san, at roughly thirty cm across, can be produced at a rate of about two a day by one man including almost all of the painting. However some really massive ones have left the Igarashi shop over the years - his biggest was a matsuri monster measuring five shaku (1 shaku = 30.3cm in the old Eastern measuring system ) in diameter with an intricate year of the rabbit design on it. The old lantern maker is realistic about the fact that people want cheaper, mass-produced, plastic covered lanterns today - he even sells them himself - but he is assured in the certainty that a well-made paper lantern is a nice thing, superior in a number of ways to these garish modern impostors.

“You can fix a good chochin,” he tells us, “you can replace one rib or fix a hole in the paper no problem.” “Plastic lanterns have no internal frame and can’t be patched.” A paper lantern regardless of how well made lasts only about a year ( natural beauty is always fleeting) whereas a plastic one might last twice that and cost half as much. On top of that, we as a society might have simply lost our appreciation for handmade goods. Price has become our main incentive as clients. We do not care to know how things were made nowadays, or who made them, or else Igarashisan would be the prosperous head of a chain of shops.

The walls of the Igarashi Chochinya and his ready-to-hand scrapbook sport countless monochrome photos and press clippings showing a proud, broad-shouldered young man with robust, thick arms and a fetching grin showing off stylish paper spheres with matsuri lights glimmering in the background. Politely showing us them, his warm, friendly smile only slips a little as he tells us that he is going to be the last of his folks line making lanterns here.

If you find this article useful, you may also visit famouswonders.com to read more about some of the best places to visit and have a look at Meiji Mura Museum.

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