Tosa washi is made from the water of the Niyodo River system — one of the clearest rivers in Japan, running from the limestone mountains of central Kochi to the Pacific. The water's purity is not incidental; it is the condition that makes Tosa paper what it is. Thin, strong, used for banknotes and calligraphy and the restoration of ancient documents, Tosa washi is one of Japan's three great papermaking traditions. The papermaking workshop in Ino Town places you in the position of spreading fiber evenly through water and lifting it onto a screen. The motion is simple; the evenness is not. A sheet of handmade paper reveals, by its texture, the skill of the person who made it. The professional sheets that emerge from the Ino workshops show no unevenness at all. Yours will. Ino is worth visiting apart from the workshop. The Niyodo River is the reason that photographers and kayakers come to Kochi specifically; the quality of blue that the water produces is one of those things that photographs document without quite explaining. Making paper from that water, in the town where it has been made for centuries, is a way of understanding the connection between landscape and craft that Kochi makes more legible than almost anywhere else in Japan.