Obukuro-san: Ringo Jōsan’s 30-Kilogram Rice Sack Carries Again
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A rice sack has already done a difficult job by the time it is empty. Made from three layers of kraft paper, it has held 30 kilograms (about 66 pounds) of rice through transport and stacking. Its red 「土佐米」 lettering—Tosa Rice—may be creased or scuffed; a shop mark may be faded; parts of the paper may have softened. The sack still has structure, but its assigned work is over.
Ringo Jōsan (Masako Kubo; りんごじょうさん／くぼまさこ) discovered that contradiction through her husband’s family, who farmed. After they sent rice, she flattened the empty sacks and returned them, assuming something this sturdy would be used again. A family member answered in Tosa dialect, “We always throw them away.” Her reply was immediate: “What? What a waste.”
At the time, she was making handmade dress-up dolls and small objects and taking them to craft markets. She needed a bag that was light and roomy but strong enough to carry a substantial load. An empty rice sack was close at hand. The first bag took shape beside the sewing machine in her home, not as a planned product but as a tool for her own work.
The carrier becomes the work
Sewing had long been part of Ringo Jōsan’s life at home. As a child, she watched her mother make clothes for the family. When she later became a mother, she sewed for her own children. The rice sack offered another available material and a different construction problem.
At craft markets, that carrier began competing for attention with what it held. Visitors noticed the paper bag before the dolls. “That’s nice,” some would say. Then came the practical question: “Can I buy this bag?”
During the period when she began making and showing the rice-bag tote in Kochi Prefecture, she mainly worked under the name Masako Kubo. She used Ringo Jōsan for her dolls and other work, and it remains the name of her broader making practice. The tote acquired its own name after a friend told her, “Your mother must be happy too.” The word obukuro can refer to one’s mother; that overlap connected “Obukuro-san” with her late mother.
In 2014, the full Japanese name 「米袋バッグ・お袋さん」—the Rice-Bag Tote Obukuro-san—was registered as a trademark, no. 5663911. Yet protecting the name did not mean keeping the method secret. Ringo Jōsan funded the production of a color instruction booklet with photographs so people who had rice sacks could try making their own bags.
The boundary she describes is specific. Attribution matters, and so does safe construction: a poorly attached handle or torn seam can fail when the bag is heavily loaded. She draws a line at commercial use and does not want imitation goods or for-profit sales made under the Obukuro-san name. She protects the name while sharing the method with people who want to try making a bag from a rice sack of their own.
What the sack already knows how to do
The original printing is never treated as something to cover. Red 「土佐米」 characters, a rice shop’s name, a handshake mark, or a large animal may land on the front or run into a handle. Creases and abrasions remain part of the composition. The bag starts with the sack’s former working life plainly visible.
Three-layer kraft paper is designed to resist tearing and abrasion while bearing weight in transit. Ringo Jōsan once conducted an informal load test using six 2-liter plastic bottles, 12 kilograms (about 26 pounds) in all. It was an experiment, not a certification or maximum load rating.
For bags made for sale, she uses a home sewing machine and thick topstitching thread of a type also used for denim. A gusset gives the base depth. Woodworking glue joins parts of the paper, while kraft band forms the handles; folded paper can add reinforcement. Because every pass of a needle leaves permanent holes, seam placement and the way weight spreads through the bag must be considered before sewing begins.
A second construction method began with a request from her son, then in elementary school: “I want to try making one too.” The accessible version requires no sewing machine. The base is folded and joined with woodworking glue, then reinforced from inside with another sheet of kraft paper. At the opening, all three layers are glued together. Pieces cut from discarded clear plastic document folders sit beneath the handles as reinforcement; the handles are stapled in place, the staple legs are flattened with a hammer, and the opening is folded inward so the metal is enclosed by paper.
That method made the bag easier to teach in workshops, including sessions at schools and facilities serving older adults. Care is similarly practical: dirt can be wiped away, with a damp cloth or an eraser used when needed.
Let the earlier use remain visible
No two collected sacks arrive with the same history. Their shop stamps, worn printing, creases, and softened areas differ, as does the placement of a graphic once the paper is cut. Ringo Jōsan does not try to make them visually uniform. Komeya, a rice shop in Kochi, gave her permission to remake its used 「土佐米」 sacks, allowing the original shop print to remain present in the next object.
Her material supply later widened beyond emptied rice sacks. Misprinted new sacks and surplus-printed but unused sacks joined fertilizer, feed, barley, and lime sacks. She calls this mixed group “loss sacks.” The term matters because not every sack in it has been used; what they share is that they are no longer destined to serve as packaging. Horses, cows, pigs, and industrial lettering then become the bag’s pattern rather than packaging to be disguised.
A surface that changes—and a bag that returns to use
Some Obukuro-san works are coated with kakishibu, a natural finish made by fermenting persimmons and historically used in Japan on paper, wood, and tools. Ringo Jōsan brushes three coats over the rice-sack surface. As the coating is absorbed, the paper becomes tauter; in her account, it can also contribute to water repellence and resistance to rot and mold. These are material effects she works with, not product guarantees.
Fresh kakishibu is reddish brown. Sunlight and handling gradually deepen it, and a long-used surface can become dark brown with a leather-like sheen. The change is not incidental decoration. It records continued contact with the bag.
Ringo Jōsan also makes pieces she describes as ikkanbari-inspired. Traditional ikkanbari layers washi over a woven bamboo base and finishes it with kakishibu. Her process does not reproduce that method exactly. Instead, it borrows layering, pasting, and coating, combining rice sacks with coarse-salt sacks, Hokkaido starch sacks, and paper sacks for imported flour, sometimes pasting one area and machine-sewing another.
One long-used Obukuro-san gave that approach a particular purpose. Its owner had carried it while raising a child, then kept it for the memories attached to it after it became too damaged to use. Ringo Jōsan layered paper over the weakened areas and applied kakishibu, returning the bag to use. The piece became Sodateru Bag—a title that suggests something developed through use and care. In 2019, the work—credited to Ringo Jōsan—received the Heiwa Shigyo Award at the 29th Kamiwaza Taishō, a Japanese competition for works of paper art.
The original sack can also meet another maker’s hand without disappearing. In Kochi-based visual artist Kayoko Takahashi’s KOME TOTE series, cats, dogs, chickens, rice balls, bread, and other motifs are painted individually onto Obukuro-san bags. The original packaging print remains visible—even inside the bag—and each combination is different.
A method meant to travel
Obukuro-san became better known during a broader reassessment of disposable shopping bags in Japan. Charges for single-use plastic shopping bags began in 2020, making reusable carriers more familiar, and media including ITmedia Nlab (Netorabo) covered the project. But the chronology begins earlier: the work received an excellence award in a Kochi Prefecture competition in 2013; the trademark followed in 2014; and around 2016 Ringo Jōsan produced 『米袋バッグのつくり方』 (How to Make a Rice-Bag Tote). Workshops continued over time.
Her phrase for the work is “Making things to be used and loved.” Obukuro-san can carry purchases, plastic bottles, and vegetables, and damaged areas can be repaired. The workshop-friendly method returns to her son’s request—“I want to try making one too”—and to the practical question it posed: how could the work be made safely without specialized sewing skill?
The answer is deliberately shareable. Anyone with a rice sack can try the method, though she does not want it used for imitation goods or for-profit sales under the Obukuro-san name. Ringo Jōsan has another phrase for that balance: “Choose to enjoy the trouble.” The folding, hammering, gluing, sewing, and mending are part of the effort she invites others to enjoy.
Taiwan: when flour sacks became clothing
There is a distinct earlier history across the water. During the period of US aid to Taiwan, from the 1950s to the mid-1960s, large quantities of wheat arrived in cotton flour sacks. Some were printed with 「中美合作」 (Sino-American Cooperation), a handshake, flags, and wording such as 「淨重二十二公斤」—net weight: 22 kilograms (about 49 pounds).
When cloth was scarce, households washed the sacks, opened them, and cut the cotton into shorts, underwear, everyday clothes, and children’s garments. The resulting clothing was later jokingly nicknamed 「中美牌大內褲」—approximately, “Sino-American brand big underpants.” Many makers’ names were never recorded, but their cutting and print-placement choices remain visible in the surviving garments.
One pair of flour-sack shorts held by the National Museum of Taiwan History was assembled from four pieces cut from two sacks. Printed text and the handshake image were placed at the front; relatively plain white cloth was used at the back. In another children’s one-piece design, a roughly trapezoidal panel ran from chest to legs, while the back and seat remained open and ties allowed the fit to be adjusted.
These garments did not cause or inspire Obukuro-san, and the two practices did not arise from the same conditions. The Taiwan clothing came from a period when usable cloth was scarce. Obukuro-san began when a strong paper sack might be discarded after a single use. Yet the comparison makes material judgment visible: household makers arranged printed cotton around a body, while Ringo Jōsan folds stiff, three-layer kraft paper into another carrier. In each case, existing print becomes part of a new object because someone decided where to cut, what to keep, and how the material could still work.
Carrying, again
Heavy-duty kraft-paper sacks have their own long transport history in Japan. Industrial paper sacks were introduced from the United States in 1923; among their early applications was transport for Chichibu Cement. They later spread as packaging for bulk goods. Polyethylene and other synthetic-resin packaging became widespread from the 1970s, but paper rice sacks remained in use in some rice shops and agricultural distribution.
Obukuro-san does not erase that industrial past. 「土佐米」 remains readable. Creases stay in the surface. Kakishibu darkens as the bag is handled. Whether it is machine-sewn or assembled without sewing—using glue, reinforcement cut from clear plastic document folders, staples, and a hammer—the material is asked to do something familiar. After being opened, flattened, cut, folded, and joined, the sack carries again.
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