Raden: shell, lacquer and pattern

Raden decorates an object with shaped pieces of the lustrous inner layer of shell. Pieces can be set into a surface or attached to it. In Japanese lacquerwork, shell and lacquer are combined on boxes, trays, instruments and architectural fittings. The reflective material is shell itself, rather than a pearlescent paint.

Makers distinguish thick and thin shell; thin shell may also be called aogai. Numerical boundaries vary. The Kyoto association illustrates techniques with roughly 1 mm thick shell and 0.1 mm thin shell, while another official account uses 0.1 mm as the dividing point. The practical concern is matching the material to the method of attachment.

Thicker pieces can fit into matching recesses cut in the surface. They can also be attached above it, with the surrounding edges treated afterwards. A process example published from a Japan Kōgei Association guide shows sawing, cutting a recess, inserting shell, then adding maki-e and polishing. Thick shell permits more than one approach.

One thin-shell sequence cuts the motif, applies lacquer to its back and attaches it to the object, then coats it with lacquer. Once the coating has hardened, controlled abrasion reveals the shell design and levels the surface. Revealing the motif means removing covering material, rather than grinding the shell into a pigment.

Raden often accompanies maki-e, in which metal powder is sprinkled onto lacquer designs. In Ogata Kōrin’s Eight Bridges writing box, thick abalone pieces form the iris blossoms, gold maki-e forms leaves and stems, lead forms the bridge planks and silver the posts. Several kinds of shine belong to distinct materials.

The technique reached Japan from Tang China in the Nara period. Eighth-century examples survive in the Shōsōin collection. Its five-stringed pipa combines shell with other materials, including tortoiseshell. A Meiji-period replica also survives, with a nineteenth-century production date separate from that of the original.

The twelfth-century box with wheels in a stream combines raden with polished-out maki-e in gold and a gold–silver alloy called aokin. The alloy’s hue and the shell’s iridescence are separate effects. Birds and plants inside the box are also executed in maki-e.

Lacquerware from China, Korea and Ryukyu was collected and copied in Japan. Ryukyuan raden appears in records of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Okinawa museum places lacquer production by the royal Kaizuri Bugyōsho workshop around the later sixteenth century. Objects and methods circulated between these regions.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Namban export lacquer combined raden and maki-e with forms ordered for European use. A Christian shrine in the Kyushu National Museum surrounds a European oil painting with Japanese lacquerwork. Its folding doors carry plant designs. It was made for church use.

Kōrin’s eighteenth-century Eight Bridges box draws on episode nine of The Tales of Ise. Its upper tier holds the inkstone and water dropper; the lower tier holds paper. Irises and bridges continue from lid to sides, while waves appear inside. Shell decoration works with the box’s opening and layered structure.

In episode nine of The Tales of Ise, travellers heading east reach Yatsuhashi in Mikawa. Seeing irises in bloom, one asks another to begin the five lines of a travel poem with the sounds ka-ki-tsu-ba-ta. The poem recalls a wife left in the capital. Kōrin’s writing box turns the episode into irises and plank bridges across its lid and sides, with water reserved for the inside. Those motifs identify the story without depicting every event of the journey.

After Yokohama opened to overseas trade, export lacquer production developed there. Craftspeople from Aizu and Suruga made Yokohama aogai work. Yokohama Shibayama lacquer continued an Edo craft tradition using shell alongside ivory, tortoiseshell and coral. Shell decoration belonged within a wider practice of combining materials.

The Japan Kōgei Association records that in 1965 Kitamura Shōsai was making work while assisting his father with cultural-property repairs. Kitamura Shōsai was recognised in 1999 as a holder of the Important Intangible Cultural Property raden. His 2002 box uses pearl-oyster shell for birds and turban shell for peony scrolls, with incised details and added colour variation. The object became the subject of a cultural-agency film documenting the craft’s techniques. In 2007–08 he also taught a technical training programme for successors in raden.

In a Shōsōin study of a replica of the shell-inlaid five-stringed biwa, examination of the original showed that fine lines on its shell were incised after attachment. The replica makers initially incised before attachment to avoid damaging the instrument. For curved shell pieces, they found that fitting a piece temporarily in its prepared recess before incising worked better. Comparing the marks on the original with the trial helped explain the older sequence.