Abstract
This study is about the tradition of paper making in Koide, Niigata prefecture and about the struggle for survival of two craftsmen from there : Watanabe Keizo and Ito Kazuo. The first one is coming from a long tradition of papermaking (he is the seventh master in the family) while the second one is relatively new to the craft (he is only the second in line). The paper analyzes the ways the craftsmen are adapting their tradition to the modern age of market economy and higher competition. Both craftsmen have different approaches to papermaking and modernization. They have a different view of what tradition is and what is the exact definition of handmade paper. But even though their result is more or less the same : their different ways of papermaking come from the same tradition of the Koide papermaking.
