Kanbei’s Kawaya

Kanbei's Kawaya is the largest surviving shared water shelter used by the washi papermakers of Mino for chiritori, the painstaking process of hand-picking impurities from kozo bast fibers under running water. The structure is a simple corrugated-roof building over a 13-meter stone channel fed by a constant spring flow, with windows along one side for natural light. At its peak, up to 30 workers knelt side by side here for hours at a time. The kawaya is no longer used for papermaking, but has been preserved to show the communal and water-dependent nature of Hon-minoshi production. Local residents now use it to wash vegetables.