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“The rich history of Japanese paper culture offers a classic example of the fundamentals of the political economy of papermaking, where theoretical knowledge is integrated with technological skills,” says Timo Särkkä, Docent of Global Economic History.

In collaboration with Japanese researchers, Särkkä has studied the history of papermaking from a comparative perspective. The study deals with the transfer of East Asian papermaking knowhow to Europe and especially to Great Britain.

“Funding for bilateral mobility from the Academy of Finland has enabled me to create collaboration networks with Japanese universities and thus increase the impact of my study,” Särkkä states.

Särkkä has pursued his research partly in Jyväskylä, at the Department of History and Ethnology, and partly at the Faculty of Economics of Kyoto Sangyo University, where he works as a visiting researcher. The results of his study are presented in the recent monograph Paper and the British Empire: The Quest for Imperial Raw Materials.

The art of papermaking spread to Japan along with Buddhist monks coming from China and the Korean Peninsula in the seventh century, but still in the Nara period (710–94), civil servants wrote their everyday texts on wooden tablets known as mokkan. Not until the subsequent Heian period (794–1184) did the usage of the Japanese paper washi become more common in science, arts and culture. Industrial purposes for paper were also developed, and paper began to be used as, for instance, a building and packing material.

The imperial capital Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto) remained the centre of Japanese paper culture until the manufacture of machine-made western paper, yoshi, was introduced to Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912).

In the Middle Ages, papermaking technologies were transferred from East Asia to Europe via the Arabs, but East Asian paper cultures were not known, nor was the history of the origins of paper understood.

It was with colonialism that East Asian papermaking knowhow spread to Europe. Owing to the large British Empire in Asia, particularly the British paper manufacturers learnt to make use of East Asian papermaking technologies and raw materials.

“The transfer of East Asian papermaking knowhow to Europe also offers a good example of how colonialism altered the Europe-centred worldview,” Särkkä points out.

Särkkä’s study has been published in the book series Routledge Explorations of Economic History:

Further information: Docent Timo Särkkä, timo.sarkka@jyu.fi, +358 40 809 3958

Communications Specialist Anitta Kananen, +358 40 846 1395, anitta.kananen@jyu.fi