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'JAPANESE PAPER. 



The mauufacture of paper is oue of tlie most remarkable of the native 

 industries of Japan. An account, recently obtained through the British 

 consuls at Kanagawa, Nagasaki, and Osaka, contains many interesting 

 facts, both as to the extent to which the manufacture is carried and the 

 raw material from which, in almost .endless variety, the article is made. 

 No nation in the world, perhaps, has displayed greater ingenuity, skill, 

 and patient industry in adapting paper to so many useful as well as 

 ornamental purposes. Inquiries submitted to the Department in respect 

 to this manufacture have induced a brief stateu^ent of the facts of which 

 it is in possession. These facts, by no means as full as could b^ desired, 

 in an agricultural point of view, are not without value as indicating the 

 practicability of cultivating, in the varied climate of our own country, 

 those productions which have supplied the Japanese with such economi- 

 cal materials for the manufacture of i)aper. 



The i)aper-mulberry, {Mdkodzu,) the Kaji tree or shrub, and the 

 Makaso and other plants, are cultivated in Japan for the manufac- 

 ture of paper. The paper-mulberry has been thus used for two hun- 

 dred and fifty years. From a very ancient date, and up to the year 

 A. D. 280, or thereabouts, silk, with a facing of linen, was used in Japan 

 for writing upon, as were thin wood-shavings. In that year i^aper was 

 imported from the Corea, and no other paper than that appears to have 

 been known in Japan till about the year 600, when the manufacture 

 was introduced by a x)riest from Corea, who had probably learned the 

 art from the Chinese. A son of the then reigning Mikado learned of 

 this priest how to make paper. That first made, of whatever material, 

 lacked strength and durability, easily became worm-eaten, and did not 

 take the ink well. The Mikado's son first used successfully in the 

 manufacture the mulberry, which, hence, came to be called the paper- 

 mulberry ; he also caused it to be planted throughout the country, and 

 the mode of making paper from it to be extensively promulgated. 



The paper-mulberry is cut down to the root annually for four years ; 

 in the fifth year, it becomes a dense shrub from six to ten feet high, 

 when the shoots, or stalks, are cut, steamed, the bark stripi^ed off, dried, 

 and prepared for making paper. This is done by washing and boiling the 

 bark, and pounding it with clubs into the requisite pulpy state. The 

 paper is set or formed in frames, or sieves of bamboo, by dexterous mani- 

 pulation, somewhat after the old method in this country of making 

 paper by hand, in sheets, the size of which was regulated by the frame 

 or mold. The young wood is i)referred for i)aper material, and the 

 inner and whiter bark of the youngest branches is selected for the better 

 qualities of x^aper. 



The kaji tree, also used extensively for paper-making, is a shrub which 

 grows in all parts of Japan, and is cultivated in the same manner as the 

 mulberry. The i)lant is said to resemble our willow, and like that thrives 

 well near water. There seems to be no reason why it and the paper- 

 mulberry should not flourish in this country, and it is supposed that 

 I)aper can be manufactured from the bark of either at a cheaper rate 

 than from any equally good material which we now use. The* paper- 

 mulberry has indeed been cultivated in the grounds of the Department 

 of Agriculture with the same success which has attended the introduc- 

 tion of the Chinese mulberry ; so that the capabilities of the milder cli- 

 mates of our country for its growth may be considered as having been 

 demonstrated. 



