For centuries, artisans in Japan’s Wakayama region have turned oak branches into Binchotan, a type of activated charcoal known for its purifying properties and its white hue, earning it the name White Charcoal. We met with Sort of Coal’s Gregoris Kalai to speak about Binchotan.

What was your first encounter with Binchotan? How did your infatuation begin?

I was first introduced to Binchotan in 2017 at my favourite restaurant in Copenhagen, Admiralgade 26. They had Sort of Coal products in the bathroom (the hand soap and lotion) and as soon as I saw them, I was immediately intrigued. It was a product that seemed impervious to the trend of overpowering scent and loud packaging. Instead, it was subtle and elegant. I knew I had to dig deeper into the craft, company and people behind it. Three years later, I now work together with Pernille as a partner.

You have travelled to Wakayamama in 2018 and met with the Binchotan craftsmen and women. What can you tell us about the craftspeople behind Binchotan charcoal?

It sounds almost trite to say it, but the people involved in the craft really operate on a different frequency. Wakayama is a beautiful coastal city south of Osaka, known for its onsens, natural landscapes, and being part of the Kumano Kodo trail. These elements make for a unique harmony with nature and an otherworldly connection to traditions, which seems to slow down time.

Kishu Binchotan remains the finest, densest and purest form of charcoal and is hand-made through a slow process over six weeks. What does this process look like?

White Charcoal is made from Ubame Oak, and yet it is unlike regular charcoal in every other way. As tradition dictates, the best branches are selected from slow growing hardwood trees in the mountain forests of Japan and Korea. The raw material is harvested by local craftsmen in such a way that it promotes rapid and fertile regrowth, ensuring that a healthy ecosystem is still in place after centuries of traditional White Charcoal production. The new branches absorb higher levels of C02 than their predecessors, giving greater benefit to the surrounding environment and providing a plentiful harvest for the craftsmen.

First, the oak is baked at low temperatures in a handmade clay kiln. The temperature is then rapidly increased before the embers are starved of oxygen by shutting the opening to the firebox, thereby preserving the carbon content of the wood. It’s that last step that differs from typical charcoal making, allowing Binchotan to retain around 97% of its carbon content. Once used, each charcoal product goes back to nature as a rich fertilizer.

Binchotan charcoal is manufactured in extremely low qualities. Why is that?

The kilns used to bake the oak are all handmade, so there is a natural limit to how large they can be, so productions are by default small. The more pressing concern is the aging population of Binchotan craftsmen. As the craft is passed down through generations, there are less and less people staying in the countryside to learn it. Globalization, if anything, has enhanced the allure of big cities and young people are eager to leave rural areas in favour of larger cities. Our commitment to Wakayama lies in part in our desire to keep this craft alive, and to prove that it can be used in interesting and functional ways. Apart from that, part of the craft requires constantly maintaining the original forest and not cutting down more than what is sustainable, as well as planting new trees, which we do through our partner in Japan.

What are some of the benefits of Binchotan?

Filled with countless microcavities, the surface area of just one gram of the material equals 250 m² , around the size of a tennis court. This allows White Charcoal to absorb impurities from water, air or even skin, while releasing vital minerals absorbed by the living tree, such as potassium, magnesium, calcium and phosphorus.

White Charcoal can turn tap water into pure mineral water, remove odors from the air, and work as a balancing agent for the body through the food of negative ions it emits. Despite the intensity of the activity taking place within White Charcoal, its surface is hard and beautiful; like a piece of porcelain.

The process is something that has been passed down through generations. What are some of the rituals around white charcoal?

The entire craft revolves around processes passed down from one generation to the next (as shown here). Everything from the cutting of the branches, to the building of the kiln, the arranging of the oak, and the maintenance of the fire is part art, part science. One craftsman told us that the process requires him to use all his senses. Knowing how much air to let into the kiln, when the oak is ready, and so on - requires him to be present and paying full attention for the duration of the baking process.

When the process is over, it is customary to celebrate with sake and daifuku mochi. A candle is lit and the god of the mountain is saluted.
 

How is white charcoal relevant to our way of thought?

In a world increasingly occupied with doing things quickly and using as many shortcuts as possible, the Binchotan craft offers an alternative way of doing things. A way of being deliberate, present and appreciative of natural materials; one that prioritizes longevity over economic efficiency, and the long term over the short term. It is reassuring to learn that a craft that originated in the 1600s is still alive today. We approach the material and its traditions with respect, and seek to elegantly combine it with a modern aesthetic—both to teach people about it and to preserve the craft behind it.

We’re Only Here Temporarily

by Gabriella Gaspirini

Much has been said about the state of nature. From it’s brutal, untamed order as expounded in Hobbes’ social contract to nature’s submission under the Enlightenment’s anthropocentrism, all the way to today’s Anthropocene. Over time, our relationship with the nature around us has gone from one of supremacy to submission, but in the insignificant amount of time we have been on this planet, what have we learnt from this natural world that both petrifies and soothes?

Our relation with the natural world, despite our very existence being dependent on its resources, has always been conflictual. In fact, it is only in the latter part of the 21st century that we have seriously begun questioning the tenets of our beliefs regarding the environment, its preservation, and the newfound interest in the symbiotic exchange between humanity’s unrelenting state of progress and the safeguarding of its natural resources. One of the first proponents of a symbiotic theory, providing evidence for nature’s cooperative and unselfish nature came from Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist who was initially ridiculed by the scientific community for her contributions to the endosymbiotic and Gaia hypotheses. The Gaia theory, popularised by Lovelock, proposed that nature, its ecosystems and all its complexity, not merely operated as one evolving system, but also self-regulated itself. In Margulis’ theory, eukaryotic cells evolved via the symbiotic relationship with prokaryotic bacteria, meaning that it was through cooperation between species that evolution was spurred - not via competition, as commonly thought. Thus, what Margulis proved at the micro-level, her Gaia theory with Lovelock proved at the macro-scale. Life as we know it, essentially, is interconnected in ways we previously thought impossible when looking through the lens of anthropocentrism. Once we began unravelling the carefully spun web of human supremacy over its environment, we initiated the process of re-evaluation. A re-evaluation defined by our re-positioning within the schema of existence.

As our role within this world is re-scaled and re-evaluated, we begin to deconstruct the pillars of our supremacy. To be in this world, is no longer to be above it, in dominance, but rather to be with it. Heidegger, famously called this being, a being-in-the-world, which he defined as Dasein - a being that isn’tmerelyathing,butathingthrownw ithinthecomplexitiesofanalready-existingworld.By repositioning the human amidst the other, this phenomenological approach allowed us to see ourselves as intermingled and already imbued in this social and natural order. Being-in-the-world does away with the anthropocentric language popular within the Western tradition: through it, the dichotomy of the subject and object dissolves. Through it, we begin to see the interconnectedness of our being, realising that our consciousness is always a consciousness of something, not a thing isolated within itself. With this novel appreciation of our sense of liminality, we can now see, not with our eyes, but rather with our mind, that our bodies don’t end with the confines of its biggest organ, but rather propels itself into a multitude of different systems. We now know humans contain roughly the same amount of bacterial cells as human cells. Does that make us any less human? Or does that simply make us more entwined with the species, environments and systems we inhabit? According to contemporary philosopher Timothy Morton, technology notwithstanding, we are already inherently ‘cyborgic’ for we are made up of non-human components ranging from the mitochondria in our cells to the composition of our very

DNA containing genetic material from viruses. Essentially, we are already made of the environment in which we are positioned - this means that through our acts of ecological violence, we don’t just hurt the environment, but our very selves.

The idea of an environment so badly damaged by the acts of humanity that its own system of self-regulation is compromised, is inherent in Morton’s exposition of the Anthropocene. The Holocene, the geological epoch defined by the rapid growth and impact of the human species, from its hunter-gatherer beginnings to the transition to industrial urbanisation, has now ended. The epoch we have now entered, that of the Anthropocene, is defined by the impact humans have had on our planet’s geology, ecosystems and species. What Morton makes painstakingly evident is that the Anthropocene isn’t merely defined by our species’ destruction of the world, but also by our coming to terms with the irremediable fact that we now know we are the destroyers of our planet. We are now not only condemned to living on a planet whose resources and ecosystems are rapidly changing, but we are now experiencing, first hand, how every small action we perform, be it taking a flight to go on holiday, or kick-starting our car engines every morning to go to work, causes the further deterioration of our condition. This newfound awareness, that we ourselves aren’t merely the commanders of our own bodies but the unwitting drifters amongst the shifting ecosystems around us, is the tragicomical story of the 21st century: the realisation that it was only through the destruction of our planet that we came to realise just how entangled we were to it.

It is true, we are here only temporarily, but unfortunately, within that small speck of time in which we are given life, and despite our being human only figuring for a fraction of the Earth’s existence, we imparted on this planet a disease more virulent than that of any infectious microorganism. It may be true that we are more microbial than ‘human’ but ironically it is the human in us which has caused our planet this great illness. Sadly, this means we are not just here temporarily. Within the interconnectedness of Gaia, our actions have repercussions beyond our finite existence; and so we live on, diseased, in the haunting forms of climate change, mass extinction and rising sea levels.

For the past 150 years we have over-taken a vast number of natural resources, fauna, flora and, minerals from their natural habitats in the name of progress and capitalism, we have created an unbalanced eco-system. We have become consumerist machines and have created a disposable driven society. Big corporations, mass media, social media and marketing, working in unison, had us believe that we need a whole new wardrobe, household items, technology every season, or every year or two, just to keep up with the rest and to be accepted by the tribe. Long hours of work usually doing jobs that we don't enjoy and leave us unfulfilled, just for the sake of earning a salary at the end of the month so we can afford next years trends and gadgets, and the wheels on the rat race keeps on spinning around and around, year after year, decade after decade. We are the lubricant that keeps this capitalist/consumerist machine running. On top of all that, we were re-educated to believe that most of the food and beverages we buy today is healthy and is good for us. Carbonated sodas, energy drinks and cereals with extremely high content of sugar, canned food with preservatives, protein powders full of lactose powder, and the list goes on and on. All these social expectations, together with a unrealistic demanding unfulfiled professional and personal lives, fast pace non-stop competitiveness to please the company, uneducated over-misuse of technology and social media, poor nutritional diet has created a lot of pressure and stress for individuals to cope with, and in most cases it manifests as anxiety, depression, mental illnesses and other physical reactions. Later pharmaceutical companies spend billions developing drugs to temporarily mask these mental and physical illnesses symptoms, but failing to really cure and heal the ill.

 An experimental society, and they make the rules as we go along.
They have created a society of robot sheep.
   Don't ask,... follow orders.

But guess what,... we've let them.