Emi Irifune - Bark Weaver & Object Maker

Called to the Mountain

Some people are called to a place. Others are called to a material. Emi Irifune was called to both — and had the rare courage to follow.

Born in Niigata, she grew up with mountains on the horizon. Not as backdrop. As presence. As something that asked something of her. And so in 2015, when the question of what to do with her life became impossible to ignore, she did not look to the city for answers. She looked north. She moved to Hokkaido — not for comfort, not for convenience, but because she was searching for work that connected her to the mountain. Work that meant something. Work that was alive.

She kept going until she found Nakagawa — a small, unhurried town deep in the forests of northern Hokkaido — and quietly, without fanfare, she stayed.

The Meeting That Changed Everything

In Nakagawa, Irifune began learning forestry and the practice of caring for the town's forests — studying how to tend the land so that both the ecosystem and the people within it can continue to thrive together. It was in this world of trees and patient stewardship that she encountered a practice called tsuru-kiri: the cutting of climbing vines that compete with tree growth and interrupt the forest's upward reach.

The mountain grape vine — yamabudou — was one such vine. Strong, persistent, abundant. It was a craftsperson weaving this vine into baskets and objects of extraordinary strength and beauty that stopped her completely — pieces that become more beautiful the longer they are used, that develop a living patina shaped by the hands that carry them.

She knew immediately what she wanted to become. She asked to learn. And slowly, steadily, the craftsperson taught her.

A Harvest With a Season

What most people never know about Irifune's work is that it begins long before the weaving does. Bark — whether from the white birch or the mountain grape vine — can only be harvested during a brief, specific window each year. A few weeks when the forest's conditions are just right and the bark will yield itself cleanly and fully. Miss that window, and you wait another year.

Around 80 percent of the materials she works with come from living plants — harvested from forests carefully tended and managed by their owners, who generously grant her permission to enter and collect each year. Occasionally, during forestry operations, she is also able to collect vines that would otherwise be cut — but almost all of what she gathers is alive, growing, and received with gratitude from forests that others have devoted themselves to nurturing.

Each season she enters that forest. She moves through trees she has come to know over years of walking among them. She takes only what the land offers and only what she needs. Then she carries the bark home, processes it entirely by hand, and sets it to dry for several months before it is ready to be woven.

By the time her hands begin to weave, the material has already traveled a long road — from living tree, to careful harvest, to months of patient drying, to the quiet of her studio. Each strip of bark carries that entire journey within it.

She weaves using traditional techniques — in particular the ajiro-ami, a centuries-old diagonal lattice weave of extraordinary strength and quiet geometric beauty. Every intersection is a decision. Every row a conversation between intention and material. The work is entirely by hand. It cannot be rushed. It will not be.

Objects That Grow With You

Her work spans bags, bento boxes, trays, daily tools, and jewelry — earrings, necklaces, brooches — each piece sharing the same essential character: made to be held, made to be used, and made to become more beautiful with every passing year. This is the heart of what she believes. That her work is not finished when it leaves her hands. That it is, in the truest sense, just beginning.

Bark responds to the world. To touch. To light. To time. To the particular life of the person who carries it. Over years of use, a bark bag develops a patina entirely its own — shaped by its owner's days, by the things it has carried, by the seasons it has passed through alongside a human life.

She speaks of wanting to create a good cycle — for both the person who uses the object and for the mountain that gave the material. The tree whose bark was carefully taken grows on, undamaged. The object made from it moves through decades of human hands, growing richer and more particular with every year.

This is not craft. This is an ecology of care.

Exhibitions & Recognition

• 2018 — Three-Person Exhibition

• 2023 — Joint Exhibition at Kuroi Mori Museum of Art (Black Forest Art Museum), with four other artists

• 2026 — Works Exhibition

  
  

What She Weaves Toward

"I weave with the awareness that people can feel, close to them in daily life, the grandeur and power of nature that grew in the mountains. A bag or a tool grows through being used in someone's life. I want to continue weaving things that are strong and beautiful — so that the life received from a tree that lived for decades can be used, and grown, for another hundred years."

To carry one of her pieces is to carry the forest with you — its patience, its seasons, its quiet generosity. A small, warm, growing reminder that something older and wilder than any of us is still out there, still offering itself to those willing to pay attention.

編む、編む。 Weave, weave.

Emi Irifune lives and works in Nakagawa, Hokkaido, Japan. All pieces are harvested seasonally from the surrounding forests, processed, dried, and woven entirely by hand.