Yame lanterns

The place matters because the materials were close at hand. Yame had long produced washi, had many bamboo groves, and the Yabe River supplied clean water tied to paper making. Earlier lanterns used bamboo strips and washi; many contemporary Yame lanterns use wire and very thin silk, while the lantern still depends on a frame, a stretched covering, and painted surfaces.

Yame lantern history is traced to simple ba-chochin made about two centuries ago in Fukushima-machi, now part of Yame City. In the Ansei era, Yoshinaga Taihei is credited with a single-spiral construction method and the use of thin handmade washi. The family also includes named forms such as the long cylindrical Sumiyoshi, the hanging Gotenmaru, and andon lanterns.

Making the lantern body begins with winding the frame spirally on a wooden mold. In Yame, production is divided into higo winding, covering, and painting; covering work now often uses silk. The stretched silk is cut with a razor and brushed with a coating called dosa, turning a soft sheet into a fire bag ready to take light and paint.

June and July are the busy months for Yame lantern work. For painting, a speed-oriented method developed: painters hold the composition in memory and work across ten or more lantern bodies at a time without underdrawings. Flowers, landscapes, flower-and-bird designs, and family crests give those curved surfaces images that can face a Bon altar or a public setting.

A large share of Yame production is connected with Bon lanterns. In household use, Bon lanterns are commonly lit before a Buddhist altar and often displayed in pairs as an expression of remembrance, gratitude, and respect for ancestors. The same lantern work also appears at shrines, festivals, shop signs, restaurants, events, and as lampshades or indirect lighting.

The Yame Chochin Cooperative lists eight member shops, giving the maker community a visible shape in Yame City. Ito Gonjiro Shoten, one named Yame workshop, describes its own line from a sashimono shop founded in 1815 to lantern retail and making from 1836; today its work includes festival, shrine and temple, restaurant, event, interior, and repair uses.