The Process of Making a Japanese Bamboo Basket ─ From the Forest to the Final Weave by a 22-Year-Old

🎋 The Process of Making a Japanese Bamboo Basket ─ From the Forest to the Final Weave by a 22-Year-Old

In Beppu, Oita, a bamboo craftsman works alone in his workshop.
His name is Asataro Inoue, and he is twenty-two years old.

He was not born into this trade.
He grew up in Miyazaki, went to a boarding school in Mie that taught organic farming, and spent a year training on a farm in Hiroshima.
An old man who lived nearby was good at bamboo work, and held a small class. Asataro went to it for a year.
That was where it began.

This film follows one basket from the very start.
A stalk chosen out of a hundred in the grove. Green bamboo boiled to draw the oil out of it, then left three weeks in the sun. One stalk split, shaved, set to width and thickness, and finally woven.
Between the work there are bonsai on his bench and vegetables in a borrowed field, because, as he puts it, bamboo work is an intensely human trade.

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✨ About This Story

Choosing a single stalk out of a hundred, by its age, its firmness, the spacing of its nodes and its color
Abura-nuki, boiling green bamboo in a vat to draw out its oil, then three weeks of sun that turn it white
Splitting one stalk down its length, then setting the width and the thickness by blade and by hand
A rim wound three times over, which he says decides the face of the whole basket
Bonsai on the bench and a borrowed field, and why a craftsman who lives alone needs them

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📍 Location / Related Links

🎋 Asataro Inoue ─ Bamboo Craftsman (Beppu, Oita)

📸 Instagram
/ asataro.inoue

🎋 Bamboo processing: Nagai Seichiku Co., Ltd. (Beppu, Oita)
Founded in 1908, and the last bamboo processor left in Beppu.

🌐 Official Site
https://www.nagaiseichiku.com/

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⏱ Timestamps

00:00 One stalk in a hundred
03:54 Boiling the oil out of green bamboo
10:20 Polishing, and the color underneath
12:34 Splitting the stalk down its length
15:08 Setting the width, then the thickness
19:10 Bonsai, and a conversation with plants
20:05 Weaving the base
24:04 Twenty-two, and living alone in the workshop
33:15 A borrowed field, and why he goes there
36:24 The rim decides the face of the basket
44:51 "I like who I am when I'm making something"
50:18 "Bamboo work is an intensely human trade"

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