*“A pair of old boots”, illustration by Tatsiana Coquerel*

Shoes are powerful personal items that we use to define ourselves as individuals. We throw away shoes only when we have destroyed them. A pair of shoes can be discarded, but the memories associated with wearing them will stay with us for the rest of our lives. The perception of movement in a pair of comfortable shoes and success was always clear for me. I remember very well my first runners and sensation of freedom under my feet. It felt like I was running for all eternity. I adapted with great joy the Nike “Just Do It” slogan in my everyday life as a reminder to drive, to push myself beyond my limits. Shoes have always given me a sense of balance, comfort and strength in my life: “as long as you have running shoes and have a good road, you can run to your heart’s content”.

Flicking through the pages of the glossy magazines today, featuring luxury footwear and fashion, we are unlikely to come across the image of the craftsman carefully cutting the patterns and hand-stitching the shoes. The idea of the contemporary designer or shoemaker of the 21st century will inevitably be clean and sophisticated, portraying the strength and the power of the manufacturing force of the footwear empire they own. Unfortunately, the popularity of handcrafted shoes by hand today is decreasing, being replaced by the shoes mass produced. There is a notable nostalgia in it when you realise that something beautiful is vanishing or going to disappear. And then you ask yourself a question - Can I stop it? Can I hold on to it? What can I do to keep it alive?

Imagine for a second that the craftsmanship of making shoes by hand has died and been forgotten, and we all wear 3D-printed shoes. And one day we stumble across a pair of beautifully crafted old brogues somewhere in the attic. We would recognise the beautiful quality of leather, attention to detail and perfect shape. What would we do after that? Some of us would throw them away, some of us would be curious if they still can be repaired. For me, personally, they would be a subject for research about who made them, how and when…

What defines an excellent hand-made shoe? The perfect shoe for me is the shoe that was made by craftsmen using their learnt ability of heart, head and hands in balance during the process of creation. In comparison the skills possessed by the machine cannot be equal to the skills of the artisan. Human knowledge of the craft is intricate and comprises emotional, physical and intellectual involvement. The more well-made shoes are, the more care has gone into them, the more they will last a whole lifetime and will be handed down from one generation to the next.

The knowledge of shoemaking craft in Japan, built up over the centuries, has been enriched with the technology over the last decades. In this technology, there are ideas for future development. The story of contemporary shoemaking craft in Japan is a vivid “fairy-tale” filled with many hardships, creativity and great achievements in the realm of mass-consumption and mass-production. While the craft of making shoes by hand is dying in Europe, it is blooming in Japan. Japanese artisans brought back shoemaking skills learned in Europe, producing functional bespoke footwear. Noriyuki Misawa is a contemporary Japanese footwear designer, whose shoes can be described not just as functional, but as real pieces of art. Trained as a shoemaker in Austria, Misawa carries on old traditions in shoemaking trying to find his own path as an artist and designer (Fig1-2 below).

As shoe consumption has increased, they have become harder to recycle. The quality has gotten worse, so people just throw them into the bin. Leather from disposable garments and footwear has a damaging effect on Earth despite the common view that it is harmless. In fact, the chemical processes employed during manufacturing inhibit natural decomposition.

The growing interest of the contemporary consumer in the origin of manufactured goods and its quality inspires many companies around the world to improve the quality of the materials and encourages a sustainable approach in manufacturing. Yoshihisa Tanaka, designer from Tokyo, found a solution in producing eco-friendly footwear packaging by transforming the waste into shoeboxes for a New Balance’s runners. The designer investigates the upcycled materials and blends them in washi paper, which is used after to make a shoe box (Fig.3).

*Fig. 3 Boxes for runners made from washi paper*

Washi paper is a traditional Japanese paper made by hand using natural ingredients. “According to the Nihon Shoki, a chronicle of Japan that was written in A.D. 720, paper was introduced by Korean Buddhist monks in the early A.D. 600s. At that time, paper was initially used for writing scriptures as Buddhism took root throughout Japan”. Washi paper is very adaptable and eco-friendly. In comparison with paper produced by factories, the process in creating washi paper only uses new branches cut from trees, which means saving the trees and forests. Hand-made washi paper is also chemical-free and biodegradable. Machine-made paper has largely replaced washi paper, but there are few artisans in different cities throughout Japan that keep the old paper-making traditions alive. An example is the Food Paper brand. Located in Echizen, a birthplace of the craft of making traditional Japanese washi paper, Masami Igarashi, the creator behind the Food Paper, uses vegetable peels and other food waste as the basis of her paper products (Fig.4).

*Fig.4 Washi paper made by Masami Igarashi, Food Paper*

By creating innovative and eco-friendly products and things, designers and researchers bring modern aesthetics, constant innovation and change the way people think. Are many designers following this path? It depends on each brand and how they define "sustainability." German brand WILDLING as an example brings innovation and creativity in producing contemporary footwear from washi paper. The brand is using washi paper produced by Japanese company ITOITEX, which regards washi as their important Japanese culture and the gift from the nature (Fig.5).

Making shoes or making washi paper by hand is a very skilled craft, which involves processes and actions that, step by step, transform from a material into an artefact. In any discussion about craftsmanship and manufacturing of things, it is easy to overstate the value of tradition or progress. Uncompromising narratives of tradition can restrain a craftsman's material intelligence of established ways of doing things, while industrial reforms that concentrate on development, incline to believe that new is necessarily better, and thus ignore the importance of craftsmanship. But it is best to see these two concepts equally dependent on each other rather than opposed.

What is the life of the shoe today? It is desired, attained, briefly used and then promptly discarded. Such a cycle of production, consumption and waste is spinning out of control. Mechanisation has made it possible for consumers in the 21st century to have many pairs of shoes. Despite the fading importance of handcrafted goods produced individually and with care, craftsmanship still has relevance in today’s culture. There is nothing wrong with mass-produced shoes. But there is something extraordinary in knowing that shoes were put together piece-by-piece by skilful hands of an artisan. There is a noble feeling in owning something bespoke. You can see and feel the difference in quality, and you know that someone else cared enough to make it perfect. It is something far out of reach of the cold, metal machines.

*Fig.5 TANUKI UMI by WILDLING, Shoes made using washi paper,*

Writing this article, I hope to awaken the art of appreciation of forgotten and disappearing things, such as shoemaking craft, the craft of making traditional washi paper and furthermore simplicity of life, detached from materialistic obsessions. It means going back to the elements of pure quality rather than the false pretence with an idealisation of “perfection”. It means treading lightly on the planet and knowing how to appreciate whatever is coming across. Our predisposition to chop it up into parts—craft versus industry, producer versus consumer, handmade versus mass-produced—is in itself a big problem. Such easy antagonism makes it impossible to share sympathies for both craftsmanship and industrial methods of making things, preventing us from fully appreciating material intelligence in its entirety. We should remember how absolutely vital the new technology is and how much meaning every handmade object brings into our lives. I do not intend to praise the craftsmanship and critique the effect of the industrialisation on the development of the contemporary footwear industry. By taking close analyses of both craftsmanship and mechanisation, we must not forget about the past. The 21st-century technological achievements do not need to diminish our appreciation for the hand-made things. There are many ways in which new technology aids, rather than destroys. It is so vital in this case to resolve the artistic dilemma about how to create beautiful things without disheartening materialism. There is a ‘middle way’: respect all forms of material intelligence, no matter how established, innovative or old-fashioned they are. For those companies around the world that are determined to bring craftsmanship back to the forefront of the footwear market, it is a constant struggle to convince consumers that quality beats price in the long term. The battle is both ideological and economic. Luckily mass-production has not absolutely won this battle yet. Therefore, it is in everyone’s interest to prevent the traditional skills from disappearing. Keeping the tradition of hand-made shoes and hand-made washi paper as discussed above - means keeping a vanishing aesthetic of craft alive in any form of expression available.

Cambridge Dictionary gives the definition of “noble”, as “moral, honest, brave and kind”. Why are all these definitions relevant in our discussion? I think they can be linked perfectly to the picture of a master shoemaker or a washi paper artisan, who are brave enough not to follow the trends, who are kind enough in the way of thinking about the impact of their creations on people’s life, who are moral and noble in a way they are choosing the materials and techniques to preserve the nature and most importantly the environment. It would be no surprise that the hands of the artisans like this will create “noble shoes”, shoes that can bring changes and a new way of thinking towards a sustainable future. And as a result, hopefully, we will take deeper interest in the craftsmanship of handmade shoes or handmade washi paper in the era of mass-production and never-ending technological changes. Shoes help people to walk better. I hope that by ‘walking better’ people will start “thinking better”. By saying this, I mean our personal choices as individuals, designers, artists and human beings. If we stop cherishing and buying things crafted by hand, we will lose the awareness that making something with care and skill is precious in the sense of knowledge and traditions. I believe that the forgotten shoemaking craft like the craft of making washi paper will never die. It may be overlooked from time to time, but like a phoenix will be born again.

Every story we tell or write has the beginning and inevitably the end. I know that my passion for Japanese culture and craft and my appreciation of all brave artisans in Japan and around the world will not end here in this article. I will be traveling around cities and little villages, around the stories written and spoken in a search of a perfect shoe or a perfect washi paper or maybe a perfect kimono. Maybe one day I will be lucky and I will find my “wabi-sabi”. But this will be another story to tell…