Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1876 — Japanese Fans. [ARTICLE]

Japanese Fans.

I have been to see the fan-makers today. Kioto, Nagoya, and Tokio are the places most noted for the quality and quantity manufactured, but Fukui has few shops where ogi (folding fans) and uchiwa (flat fans) are made. Again I find we foreigners do things upside down. With us flie large, flat fans are for gentlemen’s use, the folding fans for ladies. In Japan the gentleman carries at all times except in winter the ogi in his girdle, bosom, under his collar, or, in his merry mood, under his cue. It is a dire breach of etiquette to appear in the street with a flat fan, which is almost exclusively used by the Japanese women. Millions of these fans are being made for the foreign market and sold in Europe and America. They are cheap editions of art in the land of the gods Jor all the world to look at. They wil. probably do more to advertise Japan abroad than any other means.

As the principles of centralized capital, immense manufactories and division of labor are as yet scarcely known in Japan, these fans, like other articles of art and handiwork, will be made by tens of thousands of independent workers all over the country. The Fulkuians make fans of all sorts and for all purposes; of waterproof paper for dipping in water —a sort of vaporizer for making extra coolness on the face by evaporation; of stout paper for grain-winnows, charcoal fire blowers, or for dust-pans; double-winged fans, for the judges at wrestling matches; gorgeous colored and gilt fans for the dancing girl, who makes one a part of herself in her graceful motion and classic pose; for the juggler, who will make a butterfly of paper flutter up the edge ®f a sword. The splitting of the bamboo, the folding or pasting of the paper by the girls, the artist’s work, the finishing and packing are all done before my eyes. The manifold uses and etiquette of the fan I am gradually learning. I find a rack of silver hooks or a tubular fan-holder in every house, in which are several of these implements of refreshment which are at once offered to the visitor on his arrival. I have received a stack of fans inscribed with poetry, congratulations, or with maps, statistical tables, pictures of famous places, classic quotations or useful information of varied nature. Many depict life, manners, architecture, etc.,- in Yokohama and in Europe. They are thus the educators of the public. Many of the Fukui gentlemen have collections of fans with famous inscriptions or autographs, or pictures from noted artists. A scholar or author, in giving a party to his literary friends, has a number of ogi ready for adornment; and people often exchange fans as we do photographs. When Igo into a strange house, especially in my trips to villages where the foreigner creates a sensation, I spend the whole evening writing in English on fans for my host, his wife, daughters and friends. How .far the excerpts from Shakespeare, Milton, or Longfellow may be appreciated or understood I cannot say. To make the pictures for common flat fans the design is drawn by the artist on thin paper. This is pasted on a slab of cherry wood and engraved. The pictures are printed by laying the fan-paper flat on the block and ‘pressing it smooth. In the same manner the Japanese have printed books for centuries. The various colors are put on with sometimes as many as twenty blocks. The art is chromo-xylography, instead of chromolithography. The picture papers, sometimes with musk or other perfumes laid between them, are then pasted on the frame. The costly, gold-lacquered, ivoryhandled and inlaia fans are made in Tokio and Kioto.”—lT. R. Griff's Experience.

A famine in the northern provinces of China is producing disastrous consc ?uences. There are thousands of deaths rom starvation daily. Rice is ordered from the south and from Formosa. The Peking authorities have given 100,000 taels and 1,000,000 catties of rice for the relief of the destitute. Hanlin College contributes 1,000,000 piculs of rice. Lie Hung Chang, the Viceroy ot the Chile Provinces, also sends 1,000,000 piculs. It is not believed, however, that any efforts can check the calamity this year. Japanese merchants are shipping large quantities of rice to the North of China, in consequence of the famine there.