400 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



compared to our so-called half stuff. The further processes are 

 easy and simple. The wet bast, laid on broad thick boards of hard 

 wood, or sometimes on smooth, granite slabs, is transformed into 

 an even, pulpy, fibrous mass by beating with cylindrical rods, or 

 hammers of Kashi wood {Quercus glauca and Q. acuta), and frequent 

 stirring and mixing with water. This work is usually performed by 

 women. The short-handled hammers of from one to two pounds 

 weight have often little channels on the beating surface which 

 run together at the middle like the radii of a circle. In many 

 cases the paper pulp, after the first process, is again boiled in a 

 boiler with water only; but this depends on whether the separation 

 of the fibres is complete or not. 



When the material is ready it is handed over to the papermaker, 

 whose work differs but little from the process of our hand-made 

 paper. He mixes the fresh, wet balls of pulp in a vat, a flat, 

 quadrangular box called Fune or 0-haku, with the necessary 

 amount of water and the mucilage of Hibiscus Manihot. The 

 roots of this plant are beaten to pieces and smashed and placed in 

 a bag which drips either into the vat itself, or is hung in a pail of 

 water standing near and pressed out from time to time, as needed, 

 into the contents of the vat. Barks which may be substituted for 

 this Tororo, like that of Shiro-utsugi, must be boiled beforehand. 

 Starch, dye, and mineral admixtures such as clay and chalk, when 

 they are used, are all put into the vat with the pulp. The size of 

 the vat corresponds to that formerly used universally in our paper 

 mills, but is somewhat changed by the size of the form of the 

 sheet, which is decided by the scoop net or the form, called in 

 Japanese Suno-ko. This is a sieve of hair, thread, or bamboo, 

 framed with four wooden bars, rectangular in shape. Usually the 

 scoop net consists of fine parallel bamboo splints bound together 

 with hemp thread, or it may be a sieve-like silk net painted over 

 with Shibu (see p. 183) several times. Fine-meshed brass-wire net 

 is not used, and iron must be avoided because of rust spots. In 

 Japanese paper there are no water-marks, but here and there 

 bamboo-cane forms, woven across the entire length and breadth 

 in net fashion with hemp or silk thread, are used to produce 

 figures in the paper. Such paper is called Mon-shi — Mon, meaning 

 figure, design, and Shi, paper. 



The dipping out of the thin film into which the pulp is spread 

 out is done in this way : the movement of the form, letting the 

 material flow to the side turned towards the papermaker, brings 

 about the parallel deposition of the fibres described above. If the 

 net is filled a second time, and now raised and lowered from left 

 to right, the result will be a thicker and much stronger paper, as 

 the new layer of fibres will cross the first at right angles. If the 

 four corners of the scoop frame are movable, so that by a proper 

 pressure on two opposite corners the several forms of a rhomb may 

 be made from its quadrangular figure, and if this movability be 



