the kasahara mosaic TILE princesses
Many visitors to Japan have commented on the tidiness of the cities in this country. In this article, we will introduce a group of innovative ladies in Tajimi who literally found a way to turn places for garbage collection into works of art. At the same time, they are also reviving the local industry.
The citizens of Japan have gained a reputation for always striving to keep themselves and their surroundings clean. People never go to bed without taking a bath. Cleaning the classroom and school environment, including the toilets, is a part of the Japanese school education system. In the World Cup football tournaments in Brazil and Russia, the national team’s fans amazed the world by staying behind to pick up rubbish from the stadium.
Here in Onada and every village around the country, people have regularly scheduled community clean-ups. We start early in the morning collecting trash from the sidewalks, cutting back weeds and grass. Other times we clean our little Shinto shrine up on the hill, sweeping dust and leaves from the steep stairs up to the shrine grounds. It is not only a way to keep the sacred place tidy but also to gather to share news concerning the area.
These are all old traditions. There is another town in Tajimi, however, where people have invented a new and unique way to make their surroundings pretty. A group of women in Kasahara - a place famous for its tile industry - meets twice a year to install tiles in beautiful patterns on garbage collection points. They call themselves the "Mosaic Tile Princess".
Turning a rubbish station into a piece of art
A “garbage collection point” [Japanese: gomi station] generally consists of three concrete walls built in a U-shape. This is where you put your garbage in the morning on rubbish collection days. The Mosaic Princess group in Kasahara, a virtual centre of tile manufacturing in Japan, has taken to beautifying these rather ugly concrete constructions by installing tiles on them. We found them on a hot October day gathered around a long table in a warehouse. The women were busily laying down tiny tiles in a pattern outlined on paper on top of the table. Their leader, Hitomi Muto, sometimes stepped up on a crate to get a good view from above. In spite of the outline underneath, it looked like the ladies were combining the pieces on the fly.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Muto replied when we asked her. That’s one of the tricks of the trade.” Well, except this is not a trade, of course. All the members are volunteers. They are part of a movement to help people discover the beauty of tiles again.
“I remember the days when tiles sold as fast as our factories could make them,” says Muto. “But new inventions like the ‘unit bath’ [a factory-produced bathroom module made of a single material] reduced the need for small tiles of the kind manufactured here. Still, this area has a thousand-year-old ceramic tradition, and tiles are a part of that history. As we saw the market slowly fade, we wanted to increase the awareness of the beauty of tiles. I was encouraged by a trend among young women in their 20s and 30s to appreciate tiles again. Perhaps it was partly triggered by the opening of the Mosaic Tiles Museum here in Kasahara, but I think something was going on even earlier than that.
“I believe the plans for the new museum prompted people to start thinking of ways to revive the tile industry. In all the gloominess about the future for our industry, there was a small but growing chorus of voices saying that we should think of new ways to reach out to the world. Our group is a result of that,” says Muto. “What drives us all is the idea of highlighting the beauty of tiles by making something as ugly as a rubbish station pretty.”
In honour of princesses of days gone by
360 immersive image of the warehouse. Click and drag to look around or view in a headset. Full screen icon in the top right corner. View the image here.
“We have been active for five years now. Our members are all females as you can tell from the name of the group - ‘The Tile Princesses’. The participants are between 30 and 70 plus years old. We have people from all walks of life, from housewives to librarians to people employed at manufacturers, wholesalers or fabricators [Ja: kakouyasan - manufacturers of tile fittings] in the local tile industry.
“Our goal is to install tiles on two garbage collection points a year. There are 129 rubbish stations in Kasahara, so we have a long way to go before we are finished. When we started, none of us had skills in the planning, design or execution of a tile installation project, so we had to proceed by trial and error. Fortunately, an industry veteran kindly agreed to advise us during the first years. Now we are on our own as he feels he is getting too old to help.
“The work has started to expand from rubbish stations to park benches after a request from the local authorities. Kasahara is a tile town after all, so it’s a good way to beautify public spaces here. I remember the golden era for the tile industry when our products sold as fast as we could make them. You could hear the noise from tiles being assembled by hand wherever you went.”
Her words brought up memories from our recent visit to a Kasahara factory. There was a line of women working the old fashion way, laying down tiny tiles in frames with astonishing speed. Their hands flying over the frames, placing the tiles, sometimes shaking the frames to make the tiles fall into the right places. And there was this rattling sound from the tiles...
“That was the sound,” Muto continued, “of the princesses of those days. Housewives working hard in factories, laying down small tiles with their quick hands all day long. There was a patchi patchi kind of noise from the little pieces as the workers put them down in a pattern. The sights and sounds of these hard-working women live vividly in my memory.”
"The beauty of tiles lies in of the many forming a whole"
The group install tiles on all sides of the garbage collections points
There is passion in Muto’s voice as she speaks while her friends discuss ways to lay down the pattern on the table in front of us. “Mosaic tiles are tiny,” she says, “and each one can certainly be pretty. But their real beauty becomes apparent only when they combine into patterns on a large surface.
“The first thing we needed to find was a suitable surface to install the tiles on. Somebody came up with the idea of making use of the rubbish stations. After all, they are naked, ugly surfaces, and there are plenty of them. We have 129 only here in Kasahara. So far we have finished installation on just over twenty. All this work ahead of us is a challenge, but luckily the cost is very modest. We are all volunteers, and the material is supplied for free by the local industry.
“The first thing we needed to find was a suitable surface to install the tiles on. Somebody came up with the idea of making use of the rubbish stations. After all, they are naked, ugly surfaces, and there are plenty of them. We have 129 only here in Kasahara. So far we have finished installation on just over twenty. All this work ahead of us is a challenge, but luckily the cost is very modest. We are all volunteers, and the material is supplied for free by the local industry.
“We meet once a month for two days, about five or six of us, like today, to lay down the tiles and prepare for the installations. When we install the tiles out in the field, we do it in full force, with all the members. There is no obligation to participate. If it were a requirement, people would not stay in our group for very long. We also can’t rely on the skills and abilities of any particular member. Many of us had work experience in the tile industry, but none knew how to execute a project from beginning to end. Some knew how to make tiles or create designs, but there were big holes in our collective knowledge. None of us knew, for example, how to lay down the tiles to make a design. Because of this, our first year was spent doing a lot of guesswork. We struggled to get the pattern of the tiles right on the adhesive paper, and then to install them by trial and error, learning as we went along.
The reward of beautifying the town
“The best thing about doing this,” says Muto, “is that we feel we are actually successful in increasing the awareness of the beauty of tiles. It’s also a nice feeling to take part in this whole process, not just to work with one part as we do in the factories.
Final installation of the tiles the group laid down at the time of our first interview.
“The area where we haven’t been very successful so far is the engagement of young women. We are hoping to inspire more to join, but women in their 20s tend to prefer to spend their free time on other things, having fun. We wish there would be a much better balance between young and old in the group.
“The area where we haven’t been very successful so far is the engagement of young women. We are hoping to inspire more to join, but women in their 20s tend to prefer to spend their free time on other things, having fun. We wish there would be a much better balance between young and old in the group.
The princesses could finally install their work after many rainy days.
“Still, we are quite happy and proud of our results. There are quite a lot of people who walk around town just looking at the rubbish stations. We hope there will be more groups like ours so we can reach our goal sooner. We hope to see every bit of concrete on our rubbish stations covered by beautiful tiles. It’s quite hard work to install the tiles in hot summer days, or in the bitter, cold weather in winter. But laying out the tiles like we do today is fun! If the fruits of our work is a beautiful town and more appreciation of Kasahara tiles, then our labour is worth it.”
Download a map of the Garbage collection points in kasahara
The map is available from our download page.