Detail map of 1, 2-chōme, Sanjōōji, Nara, Nara, Japan Overview map of 1, 2-chōme, Sanjōōji, Nara, Nara, Japan

A: 1, 2-chōme, Sanjōōji, Nara, Nara, Japan

Some of the Earliest Paper Recycling Occurred in Japan


"With the decline of the whole central administration [in Japan] during the Heian period the Zushoryo [the first national library of Japan in Nara] ceased to have such extensive importance and the slave-like guild of papermakers, which had heretofore been kept apart from their contemporaries, gradually merged with the common people and it was not long before the entire Imperial staff was reduced in number and talent. Because of the absence of materials, paper, and skilled workers, the owners of private estates began the erection of small paper mills and they endeavoured to induce the former Zushoryo papermakers to resume their work for them in the fabrication of paper. Up to this time about the only materials used for the making of paper in Japan were the mulberry, gampi (Wikstroemia canescens), and hemp (Cannabis sativa), but as early as 1031 it was recorded that waste paper became a useful material for remaking into sheets of paper. The Chinese, no doubt, had used the method of reclaiming material much earlier, and inasmuch as the Japanese received nearly all of their ideas from China it is reasonable to surmise that there was no exception in this instance. In Japan the remade paper became the sole commodity of the paper-shops (kamiya) and was known by the name of kamiya-gami, literally paper-shop paper. The reclaimed material used in the making of the kamiya-gami was charged with ink and pigment and therefore the paper manufactured from the used material was of a grey tone. It has been stated that even books from the Imperial Library were macerated into pulp to be formed into sheets of the shukushi paper, always of a dull colour due to the writing on the paper from which it was fabricated" (Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, 2nd ed, 1957, 54).

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