Kakiotoshi

What kakiotoshi means

Kakiotoshi is a plastering finish in which the wall is rendered with mortar or a similar material and, before it has fully set, scraped with a spiked tool to leave a rough, textured surface. The fine texture gives the wall a weighty, stone-like appearance and helps hide dirt and hairline cracks.

It was widely used on modern Western-style buildings and on offices and shops of the early Showa period. It differs in surface treatment from a smooth steel-trowelled finish and from Araidashi, in which the aggregate is washed out to show.

A different technique, in which layers of coloured plaster are applied and the top layer scraped away in places to reveal the colour beneath as a pattern, is also called kakiotoshi, but records describing mortar kakiotoshi usually mean the rough render finish.

Reading the records

Records give the material with the finish, as mortar kakiotoshi. The former research building of Yamamoto Rock Machine, formerly Yamamoto Ironworks, in Shobara, Hiroshima, a Western-style building with tall round-headed windows, has walls finished in mortar kakiotoshi. The company's former head office and residence also has mortar kakiotoshi walls with a stone-faced base and is decorated with bay windows, round windows and other geometric motifs.

On site, see whether the wall has a fine roughness you could feel with a fingertip. Close up, the scraping shows as a granular texture.