Kawajiri brushes

Kawajiri brushes are tied to a specific production place: Kawajiri-cho in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture. The main product is the calligraphy brush, and the named material is animal hair. Kure’s Kawajiri Brush-making Museum is also located in Kawajiri-cho Itayasumi, where tools, materials, and the manufacturing process are displayed. The place name therefore gathers the object, the material, the writing use, and a local exhibition space into one district.

In 1835, Kikuya Sanzo traveled to Settsu Arima, purchased brushes from wholesalers, and placed them for sale at terakoya schools and similar settings. That episode belongs to circulation rather than local manufacture. In 1850, Ueno Yaekichi of Kawajiri village hired a craftsperson from the brush-producing area of Matsue in Izumo and began making brushes locally, shifting the center of the account from selling brushes to producing them in Kawajiri.

The key process named for Kawajiri brushes is nerimaze, a method of mixing hair so the bundle can become a responsive brush tip. The local account also says Ueno Yaekichi drew from Izumo’s nerimaze for fine brushes and Aki Kumano’s bonmaze, known for faster mass production traits. Today, the brush is described as being made by one craftsperson from beginning to end, a workflow unsuited to mass production because each stage depends on skilled adjustment of the hair bundle and point.

The quality described for Kawajiri brushes is concrete: a supple point. That point is suited to the turns of cursive script, the slender movement of kana, and the fine lines of Japanese painting. The material and the nerimaze process therefore matter because they end in visible marks: curves, tapering strokes, and small painted details that depend on the tip.

At the Kawajiri Brush-making Museum in Itayasumi, visitors encounter brush-making tools, materials, and process displays together rather than as separate fragments. The museum also shows many works by contemporary calligraphers, placing finished writing near the equipment and materials that shape a brush. The room links the animal-hair bundle, the craftsperson’s tools, and the written line in one local setting.

The modern path of Kawajiri brushes is tied to writing education as well as workshop practice. The local account describes growth from the late Meiji period into the early Showa years, a wartime and postwar downturn, and increased demand after the 1958 curriculum revision positioned writing within the Japanese-language subject. Kawajiri brushes later received national traditional-craft recognition; in reader terms, that recognition points back to Kure’s Kawajiri-cho, the producer community, animal hair, hair mixing, and calligraphy brushes still associated with the place.