Tataki-Zomé たたき染め (and why it’s not Hapa Zome)

Tataki-Zomé たたき染め from Japanese tataki, hammering, and zomé, dying, is a way of printing leaves and flowers onto fabric or paper that is traditional in Japan. Instead of using paint or dye, the colours of the plant are used.

In the UK this technique is often called Hapa Zome or simply "leaf bashing". For years, it bugged me that when I Googled “Hapa Zome”, I only ever found images and articles from people in the UK and never any in Japan. As a Japanese tradition, I expected to find something - anything - by a Japanese person. I thought it might be an alphabet thing so with the help of Google Translate, I Googled Hapa Zome in the Japanese alphabet and still nothing. Then I found this from artist India Flint:

HAPAZOME :: the name I gave to the process of beating fresh leaf matter into cloth, after four days of doing exactly that, on the floor of the Green Room at the Yamaguchi Centre for Performing Arts in 2006, creating a 6 x 6 metre floorcloth that was to "resemble a forest floor" for the production 'Wanderlust' by Leigh Warren + Dancers in collaboration with the late and marvellous dancer/choreographer UnoMan. Hilariously, this "kitchen-Japanese" is now regularly cited by academics as in "the ancient Japanese technique of Hapazome".  Which it is not…

:: in 2012 I learned that the method of beating leaves into cloth is actually called ‘Tataki zomé’ in Japan…but by then then name Hapazome had developed its own momentum.

So there you have it! That explains why I never found anything Japanese, they call it Tataki-Zomé たたき染め (and so will I from now on) and a Google of the correct term turns up a whole host of elegant images from Japan.