Higashichichibu, Saitama

The road into Higashichichibu follows the Tsukigawa upstream, narrowing as the valley walls close in and the cedars crowd the shoulder. This is Saitama's only village — administratively part of Chichibu-gun, yet separated from Chichibu proper by a ridge of mountains, oriented instead toward the lowland towns to the east. The isolation is old and productive. Papermaking began here centuries ago, and the tradition of Hosokawa-shi, the handmade washi for which the village is known, has run without interruption through the hands of successive generations of craftspeople.

At its peak, nearly two hundred households in the village were engaged in papermaking. Today the numbers are smaller, but the craft persists — sheets of Hosokawa-shi still pulled from the vat, still dried, still cut. The paper was once supplied for banknotes; during wartime it was pressed into service for balloon envelopes. Those uses have passed, but the material itself remains, and workshops in the village continue to produce it by hand. Stone quarrying, metalworking, and joinery also run quietly alongside, giving the local economy a layered, practical character that papermaking alone does not tell.

Walking through the Washi-no-Sato district, the sound of water is constant — the Tsukigawa feeding the process that requires it. The air carries a faint mineral coolness from the surrounding Outer-Chichibu mountains. There is no performance here, no heritage theater. The craft simply continues in buildings that look like working buildings.