Preserving Japan’s cultural treasures: Handmade silk strings make richer sound

The fifth installment of “Preserving Japan’s cultural treasures” is on keeping up the tradition of making silk strings for Japanese musical instruments by hand.

Marusan Hashimoto (Nagahama, Shiga Pref.), a family-owned company founded in 1908, is among a handful of manufacturers in Japan that manually produce silk strings for traditional Japanese musical instruments such as samisen (shamisen; a banjo-like plucked three-stringed instrument) and koto (a harp-like plucked half-tube zither).

The string maker uses raw silk thread made from filaments of cocoons manually spun by workers belonging to a local historical society. Raw silk for fabric production is usually made from dried cocoons. For musical strings, however, the cocoons need to stay moist. Sericin, the sticky protein in the moisture, is what gives the strings their elasticity.

The thickness of the fiber would be uneven with the moisture, but according to President and CEO Hidemune Hashimoto, 47, “the tone is richer when you bundle thick fibers with thin ones. When the thickness of the fiber is even, you get a hard tone.”

And because the fiber is uneven, the amount of raw silk thread used to make a single string is measured by its weight rather than number. In a step called mekata awase (literally, “evening out the weight”), a reeling machine is operated manually to even out the weight of the thread.

Marusan Hashimoto is the only company in Japan that uses the traditional technique of komayori (literally, “twisting with tops”) to produce samisen strings. The san no ito (third string) of a samisen, which has the highest pitch, will lose its intensity if the threads are twisted using a machine, which does not allow fine tuning.

In komayori, wooden spinning tops are attached to the end of bundled threads, which are stretched about 16 meters in length from one point to another. The tops are spun with wooden planks to twist the threads into a string. Skills are required to make the tops spin smoothly and to twist the threads adjustingly for a not-too-tight finish.

The twisted threads are then dyed yellow with turmeric and boiled with glue. To finish up, they are stretched between pillars for natural drying.

The company produces more than 400 types of strings — of silk or synthetic material, and of various thicknesses — and also responds to personal orders with specific needs from topflight performers.

Chairman and Representative Director Keisuke Hashimoto, 75, who is the company president’s father and a holder of a government-selected conservation technique (production of strings for traditional musical instruments), says the ideal sound coming from a samisen is “sturdy, rich, lingering and good to the ear.”

The rich sound of the traditional musical instrument is preserved by using uneven material in the making, and also by meticulous handwork.

Photos by Mami Nagaoki
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun and other sources)