First off, sorry for the lack of posts this week, work and holidays often get in the way of my true interests, and I think most of my American readers were tied up similarly. So, on with the show.

Exhibited here is your typical Naga-Hibachi. Most Americans confuse the small metal barbecues that you can find in supermarkets (near the charcoal) which are actually called Shichiren with Hibachi. Apparently the confusion came about when shichiren were being introduced to the west, and the true name seemed to be too hard for us to pronounce. So, as with most things foreign, we decided to use an easier word to suit our needs, and hibachi must have rolled off the tongue easier. Even better, we also misuse the word hibachi to describe a flat iron grill which is actually called a teppan. You might be familiar with this cooking apparatus if you’ve eaten at Benihana’s. I could keep this train going, but I’ve gotten a little off topic.

A true hibachi is a wooden box that has a copper liner into which you place charcoal. Older versions were called hibitsu (fire coffer) and basically consisted of a hewn block of wood with clay lining the inside for fireproofing. While later versions (after the boxes) were sometimes round and made out of porcelain (round wooden versions were also popular). A hibachi is primarily used for a heat source to keep water hot for tea as well as providing the only heat source, outside of the kitchen, in a traditional home. You could use it to light your kiseru (pipe), or insert incense sticks for aroma. As tea was customarily served to guests, you usually hung out around the hibachi. The addition of drawers were used to hold items like tongs, your tobacco pouch, or tools for tea preparation.

Naga-hibachi represents the Kanto (basically Edo or Tokyo) regional version of the firebox. They usually had drawers down one side or along the bottom, or both as seen in the picture above. Any useable surface space was adjacent to the firebox and sometimes had a lid to cover storage compartements. Drawer handles were typically warabite (fern hand) with the wood being Keyaki (Japanese Elm). The joinery was typically hanken-shiki (finger joint), but hibachi were also one of the only types of household furnishings that could also have dovetail joints. The piece above states that it has dovetails, but I couldn’t see them in the pictures. For more info on this piece click here or on the picture. When I come accross the other styles, I will of course post about them.

This hand colored woodblock print is a map of Yamashiro no kuni (Yamashiro Provence) dating from 1778, and I’m surprised its lasted this long. I’m not much of a cartographer so I can’t tell you about the quality of this map along those terms, except that it is in amazing condition. You have to click on the image and go to the link because there is an amazing zoomable image in high resolution to check out. What I can tell you is what was going on in Japan at the time and that’s what makes this piece so worthwhile (beyond the fact that it is 229 years old). First a little background (without turning this into a history paper).

Yamashiro had been the home of the seat of the Imperial Court of Japan since 794. Kammu was the Emperor at this time and he moved the capitol first from Nara in 784 to Nagaoka-kyou, then to Heian-kyou (now Kyoto) in 794, thus beginning the Heian period of Japan. Religion played a huge part in politics at this time, especially Buddhism (downplaying Shinto) since the Rulers of the time were trying hard to give themselves clout with the Chinese emissaries (since they were borrowing so much from them, like kanji, technology and creational myths) so this was when all the important religious figures started to gravitate towards the area and temples started to be built. I could list all the temples that you might find depicted on this map but, you can find that all online. You might also find the areas of Gion and Pontocho on the map that were used as inspiration for the book and movie Memoirs of a Geisha.

In 1778 the Emperor was Go-Momozomo (who died the next year at the ripe old age of 22), the Shogun was Tokugawa Ieharu (the tenth Tokugawa Shogun) and the area had just suffered a massive flood. Also at this time a Russian trader named Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin (the first non-Dutch to contact the Japanese for trade) had landed in Ezo, what is now known as Hokkaido, and was turned away (Japan was under the policy called Sakoku, no one could leave or enter the country upon penalty of death), being told to try again in Nagasaki (one of the four places that was permitted outside contact and trade, as well as being quite far away from Russia) which helped to discourage him.

At any rate, this map was created during an interesting time in Japanese history and would be well worth inclusion in one’s collection, albeit the asking price of $4,999.99 might be a little prohibitive for most collectors. At least it’s worthwhile to look at the high-def images. Check it out.

Not exactly an antique yet but quickly fading from memories is the formerly ubiquitous kitchen tool, the Katsuo Kezuri-Ki, the humble bonito shaver.

Primarily used in the preparation of dashi (fish soup stock), bonito has been used in this form since the 15Th century when it was found that it had the ability to preserve well. The way this was done was by simmering the fish first, then smoking it repeatedly. After that it was placed outdoors in the sun on racks to dry further and have the tar from the smoking process removed. Then it was stored in a controlled room where natural mold could form, further drying and enhancing the flavor while increasing its nutritional value. Scrape the mold and dry it in the sun and repeat again and again. At this point these chunks of fish have transformed into rock hard blocks called hon-bushi that will last indefinitely if stored correctly. I have an older friend in San Francisco that still has his grandmother’s kezuri-ki with a still usable hunk of bonito in the drawer; it has got to be around a hundred years old. But, alas, with the advent of cellophane wrapped katsuobushi (the shavings), who needs the old inconvenient shaver? I mean, you actually have to use physical labor to create one of your ingredients for dinner (who am I kidding, your just going to use a dashi-no-moto packet and skip the katsuobushi and kombu step anyway, I’ve been guilty of it).

The reason I’m interested in this bonito shaver is twofold, since it sort of combines two of my loves; cooking (I cook in a Japanese Restaurant) and woodworking. How does it do this? The shaver is actually an inverted form of a kanna (Japanese woodworking plane) with the dai (wood plane body) mounted upside down in a box above a drawer to collect the shavings as can be seen in exploded form to the left. This example is purportedly from the 1950′s and is unused, with a stamp marking it from Ninben in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo (you may have heard of the slightly famous bridge from which the area gets it’s name). Before I sold my planes so I could move to Hawaii, I always wanted to try shaving some katsuo on them, the only problem, I couldn’t find any hunks of hon-bushi, even in SF’s Japantown. Now that I’m halfway across the Pacific I probably could get my hands on a chunk, but then I’d need to buy a plane or one of these kezuri-ki, but hey, that’s not such a bad idea. You should get one too.

I was perusing YouTube the other day and happened upon this interesting video about Karakuri tansu (not to be confused with Karakuri Ningyou dolls; that will maybe be a future post). Albeit this is not an antique, it is based on classic tansu design, which definitely had it’s share of trick locks, false drawers, hidden boxes, etc… Check it out.

I saw this tansu on eBay and wanted to talk about it due to the fact that it depicts another regional style perfectly. Tansu production came late to Nihonmatsu (literally, two pine trees) and the area was primarily active in the mid-Meiji era. But what they lacked for in timing, they made up with uniqueness, as they were basically uninfluenced in design by their tansu producing neighbors, Yonezawa, Sendai, and Niigata.

Nihonmatsu tansu are some of the largest clothing chests made, with a typical size of over 43 inches wide and heights sometimes over 47 inches. Always a chest on chest design with the primary woods being Sugi (Japanese Cedar) for the carcass and Keyaki (Japanese Elm) for the drawer faces (this example listed the drawers as being Matsu (pine)). These chests typically had Warabite (bracken hand) type handles with intricate incised toshi-zagane (backplates), this depicted piece also has Sakura (cherry blossom) and Matsu protective plates (I don’t know the Japanese name for this type of handle protective plates, so if any of you out there do, please contact me).

Another distinctive characteristic of the Nihonmatsu tansu was the unique jomae (lockplate) with double kikuza-tegakejo (floriate button) latches as depicted here. One button was a sliding latch (karajo), and the other was a single action lock (omotejo) requiring a key, and could be used separately. This example shows a typical Nihonmatsu sliding lock cover of brass depicting the lucky Daikoku’s mallet (Daikoku is a god that is associated with wealth and agriculture) as well as some brass depictions of koi and a money bag at the center.

Tansu from this region had two types of finishes (nuri). Kijiro, which was a laborious process of multiple layers of clear lacquer (urushi) and polishings over a natural or stained-wood surface (depicted here), or Tame nuri which was an opaque lacquer which would hide the open grained wood and was equally laborious to apply.

One last unique attribute to Nihonmatsu tansu was the atypical use of the carcass wood for the interior drawer faces in the door compartment, as opposed to the usual consistent use of the same wood for all the drawer faces (hidden or not) found on all other types of tansu.