Wagasa

My classmate Florian works for a traditional Japanese company in Kyoto as an internship. The small atelier-like company which is producing wagasa, Japanese-style umbrellas offers a workshop to experience making and creating a mini wagasa. These beautiful wagasa that we first saw in the internet attracted Momoko and me to make an attempt to design our own wagasa.

When we entered the shop we saw various kinds of beautiful umbrellas and lamps. The material of each kasa, umbrella seemed different. Some were made of washi, paper for rain, others of fabric for the sun. Many Japanese women are protected by a black higasa, sun umbrella to avoid a suntan. They can not believe that western girls like to get browned by the sun. On the other hand for western people it is hard to understand that Japanese people use an umbrella against the “lovely” sunshine. But in Japan the sunshine in the humid summer is not always lovely!


Florian explained to us how to make the wagasa step by step. The process was not that difficult but it required an elaborated work. It took us one and a half hour to complete the wagasa. Our naked umbrella-forms changed little by little into wonderful small cute Japanese-style umbrellas. We could also see the other atelier rooms where we saw a 2 diameter wagasa! This wagasa is used for a tea ceremony. Unfortunately there are not so many people who are using wagasa nowadays, so the company came up with some new ideas like lamps with the same material, washi.

It was a good experience to make our own Japanese-style umbrellas and to see all the different umbrellas and lamps in so many varieties of wonderful styles and colours.

Momoko and Marius