A history of the three lantern-making houses of Seiran, by Toshi Arakawa of the Harbour Office archive, written in the 309th Low Tide. Each of the three houses objected to the draft in writing, and the objections are noted where they apply.
What they make, and what they don't
Nobody makes the lanterns of the dead. They appear at the window, lit, by the morning after a death, and they have done so for as long as the city has kept records. The three houses make everything else: the bow lanterns that hang from the prows of the guild's ferries on Low Tide night, the festival lanterns hung along the canals to light the way to the water, and the paper that lines the lantern racks at East Landing and on every ferry.
It is the paper that matters. A lantern of the dead is no warmer than a candle to the hand. But ordinary paper laid against one begins to brown in the time it takes to say a name, and burns through soon after. The paper of the three houses does not. It is said to be the only paper in Seiran that the dead lanterns cannot burn through, and in two hundred years nobody has found another.
How the paper is made
Some of it is known. The houses use the inner bark of the mulberry, from the groves on the river islands upstream. The bark is soaked for a full spring in the brackish water of the lower canals, beaten by hand, and formed on bamboo screens in sheets about the width of a ferrywoman's shoulders.
The rest is not known. Each house sizes its paper with its own preparation, made to a recipe that has never been written down outside the family. Each house says the others' recipes are close but wrong.
Every year, a month before Low Tide, the Ferry Guild tests the paper. A sheet from each house is held against a lantern of the dead at East Landing for the length of the ferrywomen's song Long Oar, which is slow and has eleven verses. If a sheet browns, the guild is free to buy elsewhere. In two hundred years it has never bought elsewhere.
The three houses
The Oda
The Oda workshop stands at the foot of Paper Bridge. The Oda make most of the bow lanterns: tall, narrow and plain, with a single vermilion band. The present head of the house is Haru Oda.
The Ren
The Ren work at the Mulberry Steps, upstream of the Oda. The Ren make most of the festival lanterns, round and painted, which the city hangs on the canals. The present head is Masa Ren.
The Sugi
The Sugi are the youngest house, and the only one to have moved. Their first workshop stood in the fisher quarter and was lost in the Floodyear. Since the 290th Low Tide they have worked at the Salt Steps. The Sugi make the carrying racks and the rack paper, and a share of everything else. The present head is Kiyo Sugi.
The question of precedence
The houses have argued for two centuries about which of them came first. The guild's records do not settle it, and the guild has made sure that they never will.
The Ren hold a sheet of paper bearing the Ren seal and the guild's mark, dated the 98th Low Tide. If genuine, it is the oldest piece of lantern paper in the city.
The Oda point out that the guild's own purchase ledger, which survives complete from the 100th Low Tide, first names a house in the 109th: "bow lanterns, from Oda, twelve". They say the Ren sheet is a later copy, because its seal is cut in a style that did not exist until the 140s.
The Sugi came into the trade in the 131st Low Tide, when Chiyo Ren married a Sugi net-maker and took her mother's recipe with her. The Ren say she was not entitled to it. The Sugi say that this makes them exactly as old as the Ren, and are the only house that believes it has won the argument.
The guild's position was written down in the 200th Low Tide and has not been revised: it buys from all three, in equal number, and will not be drawn.
Objection, Ren house: the 98th Low Tide sheet is genuine.
Objection, Oda house: it is not.
Objection, Sugi house: the author has misspelt Chiyo.
A short reckoning
| Low Tide | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 98 | The Ren sheet, earliest disputed date | Ren house |
| 109 | First guild purchase from a named house: twelve bow lanterns from the Oda | Guild purchase ledger |
| 131 | Chiyo Ren marries into the Sugi, and the Sugi enter the trade | Ren and Sugi books, which disagree about why |
| 170 | Festival lanterns first hung along the canals for Low Tide night | Harbour Office records |
| 200 | The guild writes down its refusal to take sides | Guild customs |
| 236 | Mulberry blight. The houses share bark for three years | Guild purchase ledger |
| 282 | The Floodyear. The Sugi workshop is lost, and all three houses work together in the Oda workshop for forty days | All three houses agree |
| 290 | The Sugi workshop reopens at the Salt Steps | Sugi house |
The Four Nights paper
In the Floodyear, for forty days, the three houses worked side by side in one workshop for the first and only time. They made bow lanterns enough for four nights of rowing, and they sealed every sheet with all three seals, one above the other, because there was no time to sort the sheets by house.
Very few of those sheets survive. One hangs, framed, inside the door at East Landing, above the rack where the apprentices leave their sandals. It is the only thing in Seiran that all three houses agree about.
No objection.
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