A temple table,
a leftover edge.
MIROKU is a small making practice at Honmyoji, Fuji City. Bags are woven one by one from tatami-beri remnants and paper band recycled in the same city. Not a line. A sequence of encounters.
Emi Kashiwazake
柏酒 英美
How the bag began
Once I started wearing kimono, I began to notice the accessories that go with it — and the traditional crafts behind them. I have always loved bags, so I wanted to make one that belonged with kimono: kind to the earth, well designed, a little out of the ordinary, and the kind of thing that lifts your mood when you carry it.
Then I learned that here in Fuji City, paper band is made from recycled milk cartons and waste paper, and that tatami makers are left with offcuts of beautiful edging. I put the two together and oversaw every step myself — and that is how the tatami-beri bag was born.
着物を着るようになってから、着物と親和性の高い小物や伝統工芸品に目が向くようになりました。特にバッグが好きだった私は、着物に合わせたバッグをプロデュースしたいと思い、環境に優しく、デザイン性があり、非日常も味わえて、持っていて気分が上がるようなバッグを探し求めていました。
そこで、富士市の紙パックなどから再生された紙バンドと、端材となる畳の縁でバッグが作られていることを知り、私が全面プロデュースして、畳の縁バッグが誕生しました。
Practice
- 1995 –
- Calligraphy. More than twenty years with the brush, closer to expressive art calligraphy than to the orthodox schools. Her work has appeared in a book from Maar-sha, and she is commissioned to write company mottos and naming scrolls.
- 2021 –
- Kimono. She went to a kimono shop to understand the kimono that had sat unworn in the family chest, and learned to dress both herself and others. Now she puts together outfits, runs events, and produces kimono accessories.
- 2023 –
- Temple. She married into a temple in Fuji City, and holds kimono events and workshops at Honmyoji. In 2026 she became a mother — and began producing the tatami-beri bags.
Why paper band and tatami-beri remnants
- To give something back to Fuji City.
- The paper band is made from recycled milk cartons and waste paper — gentle on the environment.
- Every time a tatami room is made, offcuts of edging are left over. Rather than being thrown away, they can go on living as part of a beautiful Japanese craft.
Made in a working temple.
Everything is handmade one by one at Honmyoji Temple in Fuji City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
The temple is not only a place of worship, but also a place where traditional Japanese culture, craftsmanship and community come together.
Yes. Each completed piece is offered a prayer at the temple. This is done with the wish that each bag will accompany its owner with peace, connection and good fortune in everyday life.
Every bag is made entirely by hand in Japan, one at a time. Just as each strip of tatami-beri reaches us through some chance connection, every finished bag comes out with a character of its own — the colour, the pattern, the shape all a little different, in ways no machine could repeat. Because it is handmade it keeps that warmth, and becomes a bag you will meet only once.
By carrying this bag in your everyday life, I hope you will feel the culture, the craft and the beauty that have been handed down in Japan — and that somewhere, through this bag, we will have the chance to meet.