| City of Brushes At Kumano, refined craftsmen work diligently to create each Fude brush one by one. Combining history with good skills, these Fude brushes continue to receive high praise from professional calligraphers. Lately, their excellence as a makeup brush has been recognized, and is used by many top models. The Fude name is becoming well known all over the world. |
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| The materials in making Fude, hair from animals primarily goat, horse, weasel, deer, raccoon, etc, are mainly imported from China and North America. Uses carefully selected raw wool and is made one by one by the delicate work of a skilled craftsman. |
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Within a population of 26,000 people, 1,500 of them are brush makers in the city of Kumano. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has recognized it as a traditional industrial art, with 15 famous Fude makers.
Kumano produces 80% of all brushes made within Japan, and produces 15 million brushes a year. |
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| In the latter half of the 18th Century (the end of the Edo Period), it was difficult for the people of the Kumano Village, a place with little flat land, to survive on agriculture alone. During the off season, they began to obtain brushes and inks from Nara and re-sell them. This is how fude (brushes) and Kumano came to be linked together. At the official Fude bureau, of the feudal lord Asano who started the Hiroshima version, Kumano artists who learned how to make Fude brushes returned to their villages and spread the techniques of the brush making. This is how Kumano Fude began. |
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