Cherry Bark Memory: A Meiji-Era Tobacco Pouch from Rural Akita

Akita-ken, Japan -- 1990-2007

Seventeen years in rural Yuwa-machi, Akita-ken, Japan left a deep impression on me and gifted me more than enduring friendships and thoughts of changing seasons and heavy snowfall; it offered stories of day trips to local towns where, among many activities, I would sometimes find myself rummaging into the corners of junk shops with their boxes, shelves and wicker baskets of odds and ends.

This cherry bark-covered container, found during one such wandering adventure, carries the textured grace of Meiji-era (1868-1912) craftsmanship. The tradition of using wild cherry bark to make such a hand polished container is called kabazaiku or yamazakura.

A friend with an art shop suspected it to be a tabako-ire, a tobacco pouch paired with a kiseru pipe and netsuke cord. (An alternative is that it was used for carrying tea leaves.)

The bark, likely harvested from one of Akita’s ageless cherry trees, speaks of the legacy of the famous samurai town, Kakunodate, and the region’s reverence for natural materials. Its cylindrical form, worn yet dignified, speaks like a whisper from the past, utilitarian though elegant.

I arrived in Akita from Malaysia in 1990, and after nearly two decades, returned to Southeast Asia with this simple but representative object in tow.

Looking back, I find it easy to imagine a bushy-faced country gentleman trudging through deep snow to his neighbor’s thatched roof house, and after shaking flakes of snow from his winter yukata, sliding open a heavy wooden door and entering the home’s genkan to a boisterous greeting, slipping off his boots, and taking a seat on the straw tatami to the side of a slow burning fire.

Once settled, the fellow would dig deep into his thick cloth jacket and bring out this precious pouch, half filled with moist tobacco. The guest’s long pipe would have been drawn from a leather sachet in another pocket, and the ritual of smoking while conversing would have begun.

With that concoction lingering in my head, I look again at the bark box. The tabako-ire is more than a relic; for me it’s a bridge between places and between times, it's a vessel of my warm memories of an amazing place, and it's a tribute to the beauty of overlooked things.