Chapter 521 20. Wu Zhu’s Ink Has Been Passed Down for Hundred Years

Taiko Kodaira is made of persimmon gum, wood wax, and tea leaves. He occasionally thinks of a famous Japanese stationery brand.

Kuretake!

Founded in 1902, it still maintains the tradition of handmade ink. It is known as the best ink in Japan, and the best pine ink in Nara.

Now, due to the development of technology, artificial ink is cheap and can be used, and there are fewer and fewer occasions for using pens and ink. The ink market in Japan is shrinking very fast, and it has reached the point where the ink produced in Nara alone accounts for almost 100% of the national production.

And the ink produced by Kuretake occupies the majority of Nara ink. It can be called the representative of Japanese ink, and even a national treasure.

After all, doing one thing repeatedly for more than a hundred years, not to mention doing it seriously. The things made must have his good points.

Although now Kuretake ink has also begun to introduce certain machines when roasting pine resin, unlike the pure manual method in the past.

The process of making ink in ancient times will not be described here, as there is no need to waste thousands of words on it. Including books such as "The Exploitation of the Works of Nature", there are detailed processes, which are not difficult to say. (If you really don't know the process of making ink in ancient times, can you Baidu it yourself?)

Glue is a must for making ink. Although fish glue is cheap, it has a strong smell and is not suitable for ink. Boiling glue with beef tendons is naturally good, but only six taels of tendons can be obtained from a bullock. Beef tendon glue is too expensive and not suitable for bulk glue making.

But persimmon glue is different. Persimmon glue is free and is all a by-product of persimmon lacquer, or handicraft waste.

Persimmon glue has a fruity aroma and is sticky enough. The words "good quality and low price" are fully reflected in persimmon glue, which is simply the perfect glue for making ink.

The second is tea. The tea needed for making ink is different from the relatively popular matcha and green tea in Japan at this time. It is best to use black tea!

Where is black tea used? It is used to dissolve soot when mixing ink.

The soot produced by roasting rosin is actually the most basic raw material for ink. But the ash looks like ash, but in terms of physical state, it is actually a granular object of different sizes.

If the collected ash is directly used to make ink, the ink will not be smooth enough after grinding, and there will be a sense of stagnation, which will not allow the writer to write quickly.

Such an effect will definitely make customers dissatisfied, so the ash needs to be sieved. And how can dust be sieved directly? Therefore, it is necessary to use good black tea to help sift.

Use boiling water to brew black tea, and take advantage of the rich tea aroma. Add the tea soup to the ash, and grind and sieve it carefully with a fine sieve and a brush. Keep the larger particles in the ash to ensure that the sieved ash particles are of the right size.

And the tea aroma of the boiling black tea will also adhere to the ash. Coupled with the fruity aroma of persimmon gum, it is really amazing.

The founding employees of Wuzhu were really thoughtful and capable, and they came up with this method of mixing ink. The ink produced was well received and sold nationwide.

It is totally different from the cheap ink that costs 10 yuan a bottle now, which smells fishy when opened and even makes you feel sick after smelling it for a long time.

In winter, if you use warm water to dissolve the ink stick of Wuzhu ink, you can smell a faint tea and fruit fragrance. It not only makes the user who writes and draws happy, but also makes the writing and painting happy.

But, unfortunately, times have changed.

Nowadays, Wuzhu also uses ordinary industrial glue, and the flushing and screening has become ordinary warm water. If it is still the same as more than a hundred years ago, using the best materials regardless of cost, then this ink will really not be sold.

In other words, the ink in this era is still not worried about the market. Since there is no cheap industrial ink to impact the market, the market is also huge enough. What's more, there is a huge consumer market on the other side of the strait that is almost like a bottomless pit, and the demand for ink is endless.

Xiaoping Tai is not going to take any high-end route. That kind of luxury goods may still be available in the Ming Dynasty, but there is absolutely no chance in Japan. There are so many poor people, so how can the daimyo samurai have time to worry about whether the ink is good or not? He can use the stinky ink just as well.

Just restore the original ink-making process of Kuretake ink to ensure that the quality of the ink is above the passing line.

It's funny to say that ordinary ink in this era would be a rare treasure in 9102.

The times are advancing, and it is unknown whether it is progressing or regressing.

So Xiao Pingtai extorted dozens of pieces of pine wood from all over the country from Sukezaemon. After all, they are all pine, but there are big differences between pine and pine. The best softwood pine has a resin content of up to 30%, while some hardwood pine has a minimum of only 8%.

The quality of rosin is also different to a certain extent. Without actual consideration, it is impossible to determine which pine is the best.

Without practice, there is no right to speak.

Xiao Pingtai agrees with this statement. He roasts them all to see which one can roast longer and scrape out the most ash. He can even see if the ash produced by different pines can be mixed to have a miraculous effect.

This is also the reason why when Kodaira asked Sukezaemon for pinewood, he asked for 10 pieces of each kind.

For comparative tests, the more samples the better.

In Shinano Province, where Yamanouchi was located, there were also pine trees growing, and there were quite a lot of them. The same was true for Echigo Province where Uesugi Terutora lived, and there were also many pine trees.

If you want to say that Japan lacked everything in this era, it was only lacking wood. More than half of the country's land area was covered by mountains and forests. If you wanted wood, you just had to go up the mountain to cut it.

And if the Yamauchi family were to do this business, if they only used pine wood from Shinano, the first thing about pine trees is that they don't have to pay. The forests all belong to Yamauchi Taro, and it doesn't cost a dime to cut down your own forests.

Persimmon gum is also free, and the cost is included in the persimmon lacquer, and it doesn't cost a penny all year round.

Tea is still the same. When Yamauchi Yoshiharu negotiated with the Asahina clan, the condition was that the Asahina clan ceded 5,000 kan of tea forest under the city. Now this tea forest belongs to Yamauchi Taro, and he can take a part of it to make black tea, and it still doesn't cost money.

It's a business with no capital, it's too easy to do.

Just go to the Naoetsu Talent Market of my uncle in Echigo and buy some workers. Anyway, I don't know how many people Uesugi Terutora has captured in Echigo, and the price may be very cheap if you go there now.

Craftsmen are also easy to find. As one of the necessities of life, ink still has a considerable market industry in this era. It's not like in 9102, when the last few ink makers in Japan were concentrated in Nara.

Thinking of this, Xiao Pingtai felt relieved. Oda Nobunaga and Uesugi Terutora, one has five counties in northern Ise, and the other has 100,000 kan in Echizen. They are expanding so fast that they can't catch up at all.

It would be better to revitalize the handicraft industry and make up for the lack of financial resources due to the inability to expand through the sales income of handicraft industry. Use new projects to increase income and then convert it into military strength.