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TRADITIONAL PAPER DECORATION
Kumogami (“cloud-patterned paper”) which can be said to be the king of all Japanese decorated writing papers.
Also known as uchigumori and uchigumorigami (“cloudy paper”), kumogami is made by layering dyed paper materials in the top and bottom sections of finished white paper. The parts of the paper with color have therefore a multi-layer structure. The standard color combination was indigo and purple, but there are also examples with only indigo or only purple. Starting in the 18th century, in the Edo period, various other colors such as green, brown and gray also came to be used.
Kumogami has been in use continuously since the Heian period not only as writing paper, but also to make book covers and title slips (daisen), which were pasted on the front cover. As of the early Muromachi period, in the late 14th century, kumogami became the standard paper to use at waka gatherings for tanzaku, narrow strips of card on which poets inscribed the poems that they composed.
It was standard practice to use indigo in the top section and purple in the bottom section of the tanzaku strip. The explanation that is usually given is that the indigo represents the sky and the purple represents the earth, so the opposite configuration (purple at the top and indigo at the bottom) would represent a disruption of the natural order (such as natural disasters). Another theory is that since people at the time believed that a purple cloud would come from paradise to retrieve people at the time of their death and take them to Amida’s paradise (the Pure Land), users would associate purple at the top with death and misfortune. That is why tanzaku strips inscribed with poems lamenting someone’s death will sometimes have purple at the top instead of the bottom. Sometimes, purple was placed at the top to match the text to be inscribed. For instance, purple at the top was used for poems on or mentioning wisteria (fuji), Japanese bush clover (hagi), peonies, and other purple flowers. However, tanzaku strips with purple at the top are rare. Interestingly, these conventions do not seem to have applied when kumogami was used in books.
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Eiga no taigai [Essentials of Composition], mid-to-late Muromachi period
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Yamatonokuni-harimotogou-harimichinoyashirono-mimaeni-tatematsuru-uta, Middle Edo period
Ramonshi (literally, “silk gauze-patterned paper”) is created by laying indigo or purple paper material onto finished paper to create a design that resembles the texture of silk gauze (ra). The only known examples of this kind of paper are from the Heian period. To this day, the exact manufacturing method for ramonshi is unclear.
Tobikumogami (“Floating-cloud paper”) is made by laying paper material dyed with purple and indigo in patches on top of the finished paper as to resemble floating clouds. Like ramonshi, the only known examples of this kind of decoration are from the Heian period. During the Edo period, there was a revival of tobikumogami, but the shape of the clouds in these later examples is different from the older examples, and so is the overall feel of the paper. Some say that the older the example, the larger the size of the clouds.
Although both ramonshi and tobikumogami are extremely rare, even rarer are examples of tobikumo paper decorated with ramon patterns and vice versa.
Mizutamagami is made by adding a thin layer of indigo or purple dyed paper to an existing sheet of paper. Before it dries, water droplets are dropped from above and their impact creates the water drop pattern from which the paper takes its name. In contrast to the three types we looked at earlier, there are no examples of this style from before the 17th century, so the technique is likely to have been invented at that time. Since it is not really suitable to be used as writing paper, mizutamagamiis easier to find on covers, colored paper, and tanzaku poem-strips.