gajou　画帖

KEY WORD :　art history / paintings

An album of paintings. Small-size paintings, sketches, or drawings are either pasted or directly drawn on the pages of an album. Gajou came into wide use during the Edo period and were particularly popular among the literati-scholars (see *bunjinga 文人画). Actually a type of *orihon 折本 (accordian book), gajou an be divided into two major types. The first type, maezukejou 前付帖, is made from thin sheets of paper of equal size, which are each folded in two, the right-side facing in. Paste is then applied to the back-sides of each sheet in a narrow line along the long, open edge, and the sheets are joined together, creating a book which is unattached at the spine. Covers are attached to the first and last sheets of paper. Because the back-sides of the sheets are pasted together, only one-side (the right-side) of the paper is used and, unlike regular orihon of which all the pages can be opened out, only double-faced pages, can be seen at a time. The opened book alternates between double-faced pictures and double-faced blank pages, as every other sheet is used for drawings or paintings. This style of album is sometimes called *detchousou 粘葉装, although it is technically different than the regular detchousou format. Albums of this type are often used for Chinese style painting and called gasatsu 画冊 (Ch: huace). The second major type, tekagamijou 手鑑帖 (double-leaved album), can hold paintings, sketches or drawings on the front and back of every page. Tekagamijou are sub-divided into three groups; 1)　an album made from one long sheet of thick paper folded accordion style, 2)　an album made from thick sheets of paper of equal size, each of which are folded in half and assembled in an accordion fashion using a paper hinge, kamichoutsugai 紙蝶番; and 3)　an album made from thick sheets of paper folded in half and then stacked to provide double-thickness to each page, reversing every other folded sheet so that the folded and open edges alternate in an accordion fashion.

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