Despite the sticky heat of the late Iwate summer, Shiho Hanadate is covered from head to toe with protective gear as she wades into the forest. Thick rubber gloves, arm guards, a heavy apron, and safety goggles are all necessary to protect the 33-year-old from powerful skin irritants in the sap she’s come to collect.
Her tools — a specialized sickle and hooked trowel in one hand and a collection bucket in the other — are already black and sticky with oxidized remnants that look like used motor oil, but the dribbles of sap that flow as she makes a fresh cut in the bark of a nearby Japanese sumac tree is milky white, the precious raw material of Japan’s famed shikki lacquerware.
While so many traditional crafts struggle to recruit a new generation and pass on their specialized skills, lacquer tapping is undergoing a minor renaissance in Iwate Prefecture, and the new cohort comprising Hanadate and other newly minted tappers is surprisingly young, gender-balanced, and well compensated.
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