Beaten Until It Almost Is Not There

Down a small side street, a door opened onto a workshop. Inside, a heavy machine made a steady thud about once a second. An artisan sat at a low bench between tall stacks of square paper. Between every two sheets of paper lay a piece of gold. It was so thin that it moved when the door opened.

Kanazawa makes about ninety-nine percent of all the gold leaf in Japan. It has done this for four hundred years. The numbers are hard to believe. A piece of gold the size of a coin can become one sheet big enough to cover a whole floor mat. The finished leaf is about one ten-thousandth of a millimetre thick. Light can pass through it.

Weather is part of the reason the craft grew here. Gold leaf hates dry, moving air. This city is damp, snowy, and still for months. The paper matters as much as the gold. It is made by hand, and its surface decides how the leaf will look. Workshops keep their paper secret.

Such thin leaf cannot be touched by hand. Bamboo tools lift it onto bowls, pillars, and doors. Polly stood very still and did not move a feather.