Sakai Bamboo Work

Bamboo, a plant well suited to Japan's climate, has been indispensable to Japanese daily life since ancient times. Archaeological artifacts made from lacquered bamboo basketry (known in Japanese as rantai shikki) have been unearthed from sites dating back to Neolithic Japan, during the Jōmon period (ca. 10,500 BCE–ca. 300 BCE). The eighth century Shōsōin Repository in Nara houses intricately woven Buddhist ritual baskets called keko. As a material for making daily implements and tools, bamboo has been used for various purposes over the centuries.

Bamboo is evergreen, pliant, and can withstand strong winds. It is also easy to work with as a material. In China, bamboo has long been a symbol of the inner strength of one who can stand above others, gracefully maintaining one’s own integrity without bending. For these reasons, bamboo has long been favored by literati and other people of culture as a material for various implements .

During the Meiji period there were three famous bamboo basketry craftsmen in Osaka who, while faithfully copying Chinese prototypes, also experimented with innovative new Japanese basket styles. These artisans were Wada Waichisai I (1851–1901) of Sumiyoshi, Donkōsai of Nanba, and Hayakawa Shōkosai I (1815–1897) of Senba.

In time, Japanese bamboo basketry also received international attention. The designer Christopher Dresser (1834–1904), who stayed in Japan between 1876 and 1877, wrote, “The Japanese are the best basket-makers in the world, and they alone have raised the manufacture to an art industry. They make baskets which are not only useful but beautiful, and many of them must be classed as true art objects.” (Christopher Dresser, Japan: its architecture, art, and art manufactures, 1982, p. 454.) The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany, also has a number of works by Hayakawa Shōkosai I.

Bamboo artisans in Osaka continued producing works even after World War II, mainly flower baskets used for the chanoyu (powdered green tea) and sencha (steeped green tea) tea ceremonies and for flower arrangement. The main materials used to create bamboo crafts were bamboo, rattan, and lacquer. Of the 300 or so species of bamboo found in Japan only about 10 are used normally in basketry. .

Since the 1980s, Japanese bamboo art has garnered interest around the world, particularly in the United States. Interest in Japanese basketry is not limited to intricately woven, traditional Chinese-style baskets; museums and collectors are also fascinated by contemporary Japanese bamboo art that is sometimes reminiscent of modern architecture. In whatever form it takes, the bamboo work of Sakai, Osaka, is a fusion of tradition, history, and modernity.