記事: Tsumami-Zaiku Materials and Tools: What to Buy First (A Kyoto Workshop's List)

2026年8月2日English

Tsumami-Zaiku Materials and Tools: What to Buy First (A Kyoto Workshop's List)

You want to start tsumami-zaiku (a Japanese art of folding small squares of silk into flower petals), but you're not sure what to buy. It's the question we hear most often in our classes.

We work out of a workshop in Nishijin, Kyoto, making kanzashi (traditional Japanese hair ornaments) by hand every day. What follows is simply what's on our own worktable — organized for someone starting from zero.

You need exactly four things

You don't need to fill a toolbox. Just these four:

Fabric — pure silk habutae, or chirimen (crepe silk)
Tools — tweezers and a glue board
Paste — rice starch paste
Base and findings — an ochirin (base disc), plus a comb or clip

After that, all you need is your fingers. Here's each one in turn.

1. Fabric — this decides most of the outcome

Tsumami-zaiku is the work of pinching small squares of fabric into the shape of petals with your fingertips. So the quality of the fabric decides almost everything about the finished piece.

Most of the fabric sold today as "tsumami-zaiku fabric" is rayon or polyester — synthetic. It's inexpensive and easy to handle, but it isn't silk.

Silk holds light differently. The color comes out clear, and it resists creasing far better than synthetic fiber. Most of all, it responds differently under the tweezers — the corner of a fold sets crisply and stays there.

We've written more on the difference between pure silk and synthetic fabric in a separate article.

At Oharibako, everything we carry is pure silk. Our standard is habutae — thin, light, with a beautiful translucence. It comes in 6-monme and 10-monme weights (monme is a traditional Japanese unit of silk weight; the higher the number, the thicker the cloth). If you're unsure, start with the easier-to-handle 10-monme.

The other option is hitokoshi chirimen from Nagahama, Shiga. This is undyed white fabric, so you can dye it yourself.

Browse pure silk fabric

2. Tools — tweezers and a glue board are enough to start

The tool list for tsumami-zaiku is surprisingly short.

Tweezers — the heart of tsumami-zaiku. Tweezers whose tips don't meet cleanly will never give you a crisp corner on a petal. Small flowers need small tweezers.
Glue board — a small board for spreading rice starch paste thin. A consistent amount of paste changes the finished piece.
Cutter and cutting mat — for cutting fabric accurately. A ragged cut edge shows up as a ragged petal corner.

That's the list. Our own workshop doesn't use much more than this.

Browse tsumami-zaiku tools

3. Paste — why rice starch paste, not craft glue

Tsumami-zaiku uses rice starch paste. Not craft glue.

Rice starch paste dries slowly, which means you can adjust a petal's angle again and again before it sets. It doesn't stick to your fingers, and it doesn't dull the character of the silk. At Oharibako we make our own rice starch paste, called himenori, and it's what we use in every class.

We also offer kits that use craft glue instead, for anyone who just wants to make something quickly first.

4. Base and findings — turning a flower into a piece

Once a flower is finished, these are the parts that turn it into a hair ornament or a brooch.

Ochirin — the base disc a flower is mounted onto. Even a small difference in size changes how the whole flower reads.
Combs, clips, U-pins, snap clips — the findings that hold a piece in the hair
Bira, menko, tassels — the small dangling accents that catch the light. This is where a piece starts to look like a real kanzashi.

These look like minor parts, but they change the finished piece more than people expect. That's why we keep a fine range of sizes in stock, rather than a handful of one-size-fits-all options.

Browse tsumami-zaiku bases and findings

If choosing piece by piece feels like too much: start with a kit

A kit is the other way in. Fabric, base, a how-to video, and printed instructions all arrive together, and you can start the same day. We built our kits directly from the steps we teach in class.

Browse tsumami-zaiku kits

About Oharibako (Kyoto)

Oharibako has been making kanzashi and kimono accessories in Nishijin, Kyoto, for 80 years. Every material and tool we carry is something that's actually on our workshop table — if we don't use it ourselves, we don't stock it.

We also teach tsumami-zaiku classes. If you're not sure what to choose, feel free to ask us.

Browse all tsumami-zaiku materials and tools