Gokoyama and Shirakawa-go in the Japanese Alps

mountain valley with river near Gokoyama

This area of deep mountain valleys used to be the center of Japanese papermaking.  Those days are over and the region has primarily a tourist economy with rice and wheat farming on small plots.  We visited Gokoyama to learn how paper was made when it was an important industry here.  We even tried our hands at making a little paper, with a lot of help.

making paper

Japanese paper is made from the inner bark of the mulberry bush.  After boiling, women strip bark off the branches then clean off the outer bark, leaving the soft inner layer.  After several more boilings and lots of pounding, the fibers have separated.  An emulsifier is added which gets all the fibers lined up in a row.  The papermaker then dips a frame filled with a screen into the thick mush of fiber and water several times and dries the mixture before peeling off the paper.  Takes much more time than it sounds like it does.

Shirakawa-go's A frame houses



old shed in Shirakawa-go

In another valley is the old farming village of Shirakawa-go, now a tourist town of steep-roofed, A-frame houses roofed with reed thatching several feet thick.  The roof lasts about 20 years.

recently re-thatched house

When it is leaking sufficiently, the entire community gets together to pull off the old thatching and put on a new roof, usually within a couple of days.

Inside, the houses are much like those of Hida Village in Takayama, with large first floor rooms and an open space upstairs where silk worms used to be raised for making silk fabrics.  The family rooms have tatami mats, but much of the houses have wide planked wooden floors.  The heat came from urns placed in fire pits and the family sat around the pit, on cushions on the floor, to eat, sleep and try to keep warm during the long winters.  When we were there a couple of days ago, there was still snow on the ground, even though it's late April.