Contents

Magewappa

Japanese wood craft

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this articlebyadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Magewappa" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (December 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepLorGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,134 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:曲げわっぱ]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|曲げわっぱ}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Magewappa (曲げわっぱ, lit. "Bent-woodware") is a traditional Japanese steam bending wood craft found in Odate, Akita Prefecture, Japan. The Magewappa products are known for the brilliant elegance of their straight grain, and the light yet rich color.

Magewappa was first made by woodcutters in the Odate area, using straight grain Akita Cedar. The Lord of Odate Castle, Nishiie Satake, encouraged this use of the soldiers and has been passed on from generation to generation from the end of the Edo period to the present. With the emergence of plastics, it became economically necessary for some craftsmen to change their business. Since then more people are becoming aware of real quality and craftsmanship. Odate Magewappa fits this description perfectly.

For more than four hundred years the people of the area have exploited mountains, planted Japanese cedars, and repeated the process of weeding, pruning, and thinning out the forests every year to protect the beauty and health of the environment for the next generation

Out of four hundred saplings of Akita cedar planted, less than thirty might be found suitable to make products. Only Akita cedars over one hundred years old, which have survived the very severe weather conditions of northern Japan, can be bent in the manufacturing process mentioned above. Ones with a knot or even slight discoloration cannot be used.

• Odate Magewappa

• Birch bark