karakami　唐紙

KEY WORD :　art history / paintings

1　Any paper imported from China. Although the terms karakami and *toushi 唐紙 were originally interchangeable, they gradually came to refer to different paper and different paper uses. By the Muromachi period their meaning was completely separate. Toushi came to mean a type of paper which contains bamboo fiber. 2　An earth-color-based, decorative paper imported from China in the Heian period which was originally used for painting and calligraphy. Sometimes it was printed with a wax-relief design *rousen 臘箋, or one sheet was printed with a five-colored design known as saisen 彩牋. In the Muromachi period, karakami was exclusively used for sliding doors *shouji 障子, so the term karakami is also used as an abbreviation for *karakami shouji 唐紙障子, referring to shouji screens made of, or decorated with karakami paper. 3　A type of decorated Chinese paper. The paper was first whitewashed *gubiki 具引き and then printed with mica *kirara 雲母粉, using a woodblock print *ukiyo-e 浮世絵. This paper is known as karakami, Chinese paper, because it was first imported from Northern Song China, but in the late Heian period, it was imitated in Japan, and the Japanese version is also known as karakami. In the Edo period karakami was also known as kouzeigami 行成紙 because similar paper was used for the anthologies of the famous poet Fujiwara Kouzei 藤原行成 (wellknown Yukinari, 972-1027).

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