Why the studio smells of shells — the gofun base coat.

Morning at the Shirakawa studio.
A particular smell. Shells, a little wood, then paper.
The secret of gofun — the white base coat beneath every daruma — in three minutes.

What is gofun?

Gofun is a white pigment made by grinding seashells into a fine powder. In traditional Japanese craft it is most often made from Itaboga oysters or scallops — shells that have aged for decades or centuries on the shore, weathered by wind and tide, then refined.

It has been used for centuries as the base coat under Japanese paintings, noh masks, hina dolls — and daruma.

How we use it on Shirakawa daruma.

A daruma body is made of layered washi paper, so its surface has a faint roughness. Red paint applied directly to that surface sits unevenly; the color looks flat and thin.

So first, we brush on gofun mixed with nikawa (animal-hide glue) as a base coat. What this does:

• The surface becomes white and smooth.
• The vermilion on top glows, with a depth flat primer can't give.
• The paper fibers are sealed, so the color doesn't fade easily.

The morning smell of the studio.

The raw material is shells. When the painters mix gofun in the morning, the studio smells faintly of the sea. That is the smell of a Shirakawa morning, before breakfast, before the day has really started.

Not a chemical smell, but something alive. Sea, forest, paper — all present in the room.

Why we still do it this way.

Modern synthetic pigments are cheaper, faster, more consistent. And yet at Shirakawa Daruma Sohonpo, we still use gofun.

The reason is simple. What survives 100 or 200 years from now is the gofun daruma. In traditional craft, value is not decided by the beauty of the finished moment, but by what endures. Every Shirakawa daruma, from 1783 to today, wears its vermilion on a bed of gofun.

Even the eco-daruma.

Our recent 100% paper-based eco-daruma also uses gofun as its base coat. Paper, glue, pigment — all from natural materials. When its role is done, it can be ceremonially burned and returned to the earth.

The people of 1783 used these materials. In 2026, we still use them. That is not "old" — it is the fact that the right answer hasn't changed. That's what I think, every morning, breathing in the smell of the studio.