Iida
Puppetry of Iida
Puppet theatre took root in these farming villages; their stages survive, and the puppet heads are still repaired and used.
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NaganoArchitectureAgematsu
Kiso Cypress Forest
A forest saved by the Owari domain's strict felling ban; the timber for Ise Shrine's rebuilding still comes from here.
Suwa
Glass and Precision Industry of Suwa
A precision-machinery town whose skills flowed sideways into glass - industry and craft at close range.
GifuArt & CraftsGifu
The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu
One of the world's major holdings of Odilon Redon, including his great sequences of black lithographs.
GifuMuseumsGifu
Gifu City Museum of History
On the castle town Nobunaga built, with his free-market street reconstructed at full size to be walked through.
GifuArchitectureGifu
Gifu Media Cosmos
Toyo Ito's lattice of thin timber spans the whole hall; fabric 'globes' divide air and light instead of air-conditioning.
GifuArt & CraftsGifu
Gifu Lanterns
Mino paper stretched so thin the bamboo ribs show through when the lantern is lit.
GifuArt & CraftsGifu
Gifu Paper Umbrellas
Most of Japan's paper umbrellas came from here; looked up into, the threads binding the ribs form a geometric pattern.
GifuArchitectureGifu
Kawaramachi District
A wholesalers' quarter on the river, its lattice fronts once fronting the paper and lantern trades.
GifuArt & CraftsTajimi
Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu
Japan's only public museum devoted to contemporary ceramics, inside Isozaki's Ceramic Park.
GifuMuseumsTajimi
Tajimi Mosaic Tile Museum
Terunobu Fujimori shaped the building like the clay pit itself, its walls studded with tiles so the architecture is the specimen.
GifuArt & Crafts
GifuMuseumsToki
Toki Mino Ceramics History Museum
Sherds from the kilns that fired Shino and Oribe - technique read from the failures rather than the finished pots.
GifuMuseumsMizunami
Mizunami Ceramics Museum
From Momoyama tea ware to modern export porcelain, including the designs made purely for foreign markets.
GifuMuseumsKani
Arakawa Toyozo Museum
The man who found a Shino sherd in these hills and proved Momoyama tea ware was made in Mino, not Kyoto.
GifuArt & CraftsMino
Hon-Minoshi Paper
Paper made here survives in the 8th-century Shosoin; fibres crossed both ways make it thin, even and hard to tear.
GifuArt & CraftsMino
Mino Washi Akari Art Exhibition
Paper light sculptures set out along the old street, with the town's own lamps switched off for the night.
GifuMuseumsSeki
Seki Sword Tradition Museum
Smiths forge in public here on set days - the sparks and the sound included in what is shown.
GifuArt & CraftsSeki
Enku Buddhas
The monk Enku carved with a hatchet as he walked Japan; over 5,000 survive, smiling out of raw split wood.
GifuArt & CraftsTakayama
Takayama Festival Floats
Floats into which the Hida craftsmen poured everything - carving, lacquer, metalwork and clockwork puppets.
GifuArchitectureTakayama
Kusakabe Folk Museum
A merchant house whose massive beam frame was deliberately left exposed to display the Hida carpenters' skill.
GifuArchitectureTakayama
Yoshijima Family Residence
A brewer's house next door, its slender members latticed and lit from a high window so the frame reads as pattern.
GifuArt & CraftsTakayama
Ichii Wood Carving
Carved from yew and never painted, so the wood's red and white heartwood does the work and deepens with age.
Takayama
Hida Shunkei Lacquer
Clear lacquer that reveals rather than hides the grain, so choosing the wood decides the finished piece.