JOURNAL
WATARU HATANO
FROM SOIL TO PAPER, FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT,
TIME TAKES FORM THROUGH THE HANDS.
作品と静かに対峙する、
豊かな時間。
美しいものは、
こころの琴線に触れる。
01｜Land
｜Visiting the Place Where Paper Is Born
Kyoto Prefecture, Ayabe City.
Between the mountains, rivers, and fields
lie Wataru Hatano’s home and workshop.
Away from the city,
he makes paper, creates his work,
and lives in harmony with nature.
The landscapes behind his work
are not ones created for any special purpose.
The green of the mountains he sees each day.
The light shifting with the seasons.
The scent of rain.
The dampness of the earth.
These rhythms of everyday life
quietly find their way into Wataru Hatano’s work
and into the way he lives.
As the seasons change
I let my thoughts wander.
02｜Between
｜Between Plant and Paper.
The kōzo harvested in winter
is first steamed, and while still warm, its bark is peeled away.
The bark is then dried and soaked in water,
and the dark outer layer is carefully scraped away.
It is boiled, washed,
and every tiny impurity is removed by hand.
The fibers are then beaten,
until at last they are ready to be made into paper.
Before a single sheet of washi comes into being,
there are countless steps carried out by hand,
and a great deal of time.
Rather than replacing these processes with machines,
the work continues through human hands and eyes,
carefully responding to the condition of the material.
What has been passed down in Kurotani
for more than 800 years is not only the paper itself.
It is also the memory held in the hands—
the knowledge of how to transform a plant into paper.
03｜Kurotani
｜A Village of Papermaking, 800 Years On.
Kurotani, Ayabe City, Kyoto Prefecture.
Surrounded by mountains,
with the Kurotani River flowing through the valley,
this is a land with little flat ground and harsh winters.
While the land was never particularly suited to farming,
its abundant water and mountain landscape made it a place where papermaking could take root and sustain the lives of its people.
Its story is said to have begun some 800 years ago.
It is believed that members of the Heike clan who arrived in this valley eventually made their lives here and began making paper.
Since then, papermaking has not been something separate from everyday life,
but a practice passed down as part of the daily rhythm of this land.
From person to person.
From hand to hand.
And still, the memory of those hands
remains within each sheet of paper.
04 | Paper
｜The Memory of Paper.
Paper is left to dry.
But this is not a time shaped by wind alone.
It gathers the wind,
it gathers time,
and slowly gains depth.
Even the time spent drying
becomes part of the paper itself.
05 | With Nature
｜Living in Harmony with Nature.
The kōzo that sprouts in spring
grows to around three to four meters by winter,
nourished by summer light and rain.
Along the way, people tend the fields—
cutting the grass, thinning the shoots,
and watching over its growth.
Papermaking is not a craft
that begins and ends within the workshop.
There is soil.
There is water.
There is light.
There are seasons.
All that human hands can do
is quietly work alongside these natural rhythms.
Nature and people.
Paper does not simply emerge from a factory.
06 | Seasons｜Seasons Turn. Paper Is Born.
Kōzo grows over the course of a year.
It sprouts in spring,
grows tall through summer,
and is harvested in winter, after its leaves have fallen.
From the stems that remain,
new shoots emerge again the following spring.
Growing, harvesting, and growing once more.
The rhythm of papermaking
moves with the cycle of the seasons.
To look closely at a single sheet of paper
may also be to glimpse the passage of a year.
JOURNAL
07 | Beginning
｜The Memory of a Place. Where It All Began.
Three years before Haku_ma came to be.
I was renovating and relocating my own studio when a single photograph caught my eye.
Old wooden beams and earthen walls.
In the quiet light, a washi artwork hung on the wall.
Drawn to its presence, I reached out to Wataru Hatano for the first time, hoping to commission a work for my studio.
That was the beginning.
And now, years later,
I find myself standing in the very place I had once seen only in that photograph.
The memory of the work.
The memory of the place.
Two moments in time, once apart,
seemed to quietly come together.
風が通り、光が移ろい、 季節が過ぎていく。
芽吹き、育ち、やがて土へ還り、 また新しい季節がはじまる。
自然は、立ち止まることなく巡っている。
私たちもまた、 その巡りの中で生きている。
The wind passes through, and the light shifts.
The seasons move on.
Life sprouts, grows, and eventually returns to the earth,
only for a new season to begin again.
Nature moves endlessly through its cycles.
And we, too,
live within that rhythm.
水が流れ、草木が育ち、土が潤う。
人は自然から受け取り、手を加え、また、その流れの中へ還していく。
豊かさとは、たくさん持つことではなく、
巡るものの中に生きることなのかもしれない。
自然とともに生きる。
その営みの中に、暮らしの源泉がある。
Water flows, plants grow, and the earth is nourished.
We receive from nature, shape what it gives us, and return it once again to its flow.
Perhaps richness is not about how much we possess,
but about living within the cycles that surround us.
To live with nature.
Within that way of life lies the source of true abundance.
08｜Atelier
｜A Place of Creation
When I open the door to the atelier,
time seems to move a little differently.
The scent of materials.
Soft light.
Things resting quietly in their place.
The new and the old.
Things that have left someone’s hands,
and things waiting to pass into someone else’s.
Here,
it feels as though the time someone once cherished
is being passed on to another.
09 | Layers
｜What Emerges Through Layers.
One sheet of washi,
layered with another.
Touched by hand,
its form carefully felt and shaped,
it slowly begins to take on its own expression.
What is layered
is more than paper.
The time spent working by hand.
The feeling of the moment.
The subtle variations born by chance.
Trace upon trace gathers,
until, eventually,
it becomes a work of art.
一枚の紙にどれだけの時間を重ねられるだろう。
触れる。待つ。また、触れる。
手の跡を残しながら、 紙は少しずつ、紙ではない何かへと変わっていく。
つくるということは、形を与えることではなく、まだそこにないものが現れるまで、静かに待つことなのかもしれない。
How much time can be layered into a single sheet of paper?
Touch. Wait. Touch again.
As traces of the hand remain, the paper slowly becomes something beyond paper.
Perhaps to create is not to impose a form,
but to wait quietly
until something that was not there before begins to emerge.
JOURNAL
10 | Humanity
｜What Emerges Through Layers.
What we find beautiful.
What we choose to cherish.
How we choose to connect with others.
In the things we create,
something of the way we live
quietly finds its way in.
触れ、削り、重ね、
手を動かすたびに、
形のないものに、形が生まれていく。
土にも、紙にも、
はじめから答えはない。
何を見るか。
何を感じるか。
そして、何を生み出すか。
すべては、つくる人の手に委ねられている。
ひとつの手から、
まだ見たことのない宇宙が生まれる。
Touch, carve, layer.
With every movement of the hand,
form begins to emerge from the formless.
Neither earth nor paper
holds an answer from the beginning.
What do we see?
What do we feel?
And what do we create?
Everything is entrusted to the hands of the maker.
From a single pair of hands,
a universe never seen before can emerge.
11 | Material
｜Resonance of Materials
A ground layered with fallen leaves.
Within it are forms and colors shaped by time.
This was also a source of inspiration for the work The Accumulation of Time.
Layers of earth and pigment are applied over washi, one upon another.
As the layers deepen, depth and texture begin to emerge, while the drying earth gives rise to cracks and other unexpected expressions.
Rather than making everything uniform,
these differences are allowed to remain.
Texture. Distortion. Fibers. Variations in color.
The act of layering materials upon washi is more than a physical accumulation.
It can also be understood as an accumulation of time and thought.
Washi, earth, and pigment—
layered again and again,
slowly accumulating over time.
A beauty born from all that has gathered.
在るということ。
光が満ち、やがて翳る。
時が移ろうほどに、見えなかったものが現れる。
語らず。求めず。ただ、そこに在る。
静けさは、存在を深くする。
To Be.
Light fills the room, then slowly fades into shadow.
As time passes, what was unseen begins to reveal itself.
Without speaking. Without asking.
Simply, it is there.
Stillness deepens presence.
12｜Reveal
｜Expressions Shaped by Light.
Neither paper nor earth
has a single, fixed expression.
Morning light.
The light of a cloudy day.
The light at dusk.
As the angle of light changes,
so do the shadows cast by the fibers and textures.
Though the work itself remains the same,
it appears different depending on the moment in which it is seen.
A work does not become still
the moment it is completed.
With the light of the place in which it lives,
its expression continues to change.
13 | Wataru
Hatano
｜Opening the Future Through Washi.
1971 — Born on Awaji Island, Hyogo Prefecture.
1995 — Graduated from the Department of Japanese Painting, Tama Art University.
1997 — Began training in Kurotani washi papermaking.
2000 — Became independent as a washi artisan.
2007 — Certified as a Kyoto Traditional Crafts Master.
2018 — Established Washi Kobo Hatano.
Working primarily in the field of craft,
Hatano designs and creates spaces using washi.
Alongside this work, he holds exhibitions in Japan and abroad, sharing the possibilities of washi while continuing his artistic practice.
| Art Works at Haku_ma
｜Between Light and Darkness
Wataru Hatano says that in darkness, we can sense the origins of creation.
Because we cannot see, we look.
Because we do not know, we imagine.
In a place flooded entirely with light,
what meets the eye can come to occupy almost the whole of our world.
But in darkness,
our awareness turns toward what cannot be seen.
What is there?
Who might be there?
Hatano wonders whether people in Japan once felt not only fear in darkness, but also a sense that something unseen was quietly watching over them.
Darkness is not the absence of light.
Moonlight appears beautiful
because it is surrounded by darkness.
A faint trace of moonlight entering a truly dark corridor
can sometimes appear like a single pillar standing in the dark.
Light reveals its form
only when it is placed within darkness.
Darkness and light.
Black and white.
Not one or the other,
but something that exists in the space between.
Within the space called Haku_ma,
Hatano’s “darkness” resides.
Because darkness exists within white,
the darkness becomes deeper,
and the slightest light becomes more vivid.
Rather than erasing the darkness,
we might try spending time with it.
This work quietly holds a space for imagination to arise.
On the nights you stay in this room,
try dimming the lights, just a little.
Allow yourself to sink into the questions the work leaves behind,
and into fragments of thought from worlds beyond your own.
May it become a moment
to entrust your heart to the world unfolding beyond.
August 2026 / Haku_ma
01
WATARU HATANO
| The accumulation of time
2024Washi, soil, pigments & acrylic on wood panel with washi
605mm x 665mm
01
WATARU HATANO
| A view from the window
2025｜Pigments,
soil & acrylic on washi
600mm x 970mm
