Collection of Urushi: Urushi Tapping

The process of urushikaki, or tapping urushi trees, consists of 3 steps.  It might seems very simple and easy, but it's NOT! It requires delicate sensitivity and years of experience to be able to collect urushi for one whole season without killing trees. 

1. Bark tree with "kawahagi kama" to make the rough surface flat and easier to work on:

2. Make a horizontal scratch with "kakikama":

3. Scoop up urushi drop using "kakibera" and put it into "kakidaru":

The white line on the top is the scratch we just made.  Here you can see white tree liquid is pouring out from it!  

From the moment it is taken out from trees, urushi quickly starts oxidization and changes its color from white transparent to milky brown. 








All the pictures were taken in Ibaraki Prefecture, 2009 summer.

Collection of Urushi: Season and Tools

You might have seen natural rubber being collected from a tapped tree; they make a scratch on a gum tree and put a small pail under that, letting rubber to drip down automatically into it.  However, process of urushi tapping, urushikaki in Japanese, is very different from the image.

    

Tree tappers make the rounds of each tree everyday (except rainy days) during summer time from June to October or November.  One urushi tree is tapped once a four days, so scratches look like the above picture in the middle of the season.  This is a technique to get the maximal amount of urushi from one tree in accordance with its biological nature.

An experienced tree tapper usually works on about 400 to 500 urushi trees in one summer and collects 180cc to 200cc of urushi from each. After the season, they cut down the trees they tapped, and wait the stumps sprout out again and grow for the next 10-15 years (this method popular in Japan today is called "koroshigaki").

These are tools they use for urushikaki.  Names and combination seem to vary by region; since this picture was taken in Ibaraki Prefecture, I would like to explain them in its manner.

The long blade in the lefthand is called "kawahagi kama" and used to strip bark off a tree.  The small one with a complex curving at the point (see the closeup picture on the right) is "kakikama," a knife to make a scratch on tree surface.  The flat metalic spatula,  "kakibera" is used to collect urushi sap into the container called "kakidaru".  The next post will explain the process of urushikaki using these tools.