Various Inden patterns by Mr. Nishitoge

“Inden” is a method to prepare deer skin on which fine patterns are printed using Japanese lacquer made of sap from a lacquer tree “Urushi”. For many centuries, Urushi has been widely used to protect surfaces from abrasion and weather. It was also used to decorate armor for Japanese worriers, “Samurai”.

Inden is one of the classic Japanese crafts. The name “Inden” is an abbreviation of “Indo-denrai” where “Indo” means “India”‚ “denrai” means‚ “learned from” in Japanese, hence it means “an art learnt from India”.

Ancient Japanese learned from India all sorts of things such as Buddhism as well as other arts and crafts. I have asked an Indian physicist if he knew anything similar in India. He immediately brought me a beautiful silk cloth that shows quite similar pattern (Keri pattern) to a traditional Inden pattern. He also mentioned that his wife had seen similar patterns printed on leather in south India. International relations between Japan and India goes back over 1000 years (through China in most cases). KEK now have various collaborations with Indian physicists.

The art of producing Inden is slowly disappearing as modern materials are taking over the market. Mr. Masayoshi Nishitoge is one of the forerunner of the art actively producing the Inden products although he is already at the age of 88.

He himself invented various techniques to make the Inden product available to customers at competitive prices. He is the one who established a technique to prepare deer skin to be a practical chamois cloth.

Deer skin, all of which he is get-ting from China now, is tanned and smoked.

One of Indian patterns, Keri