Hanaishi Agate

The Imakane Town site says agate is a kind of chalcedony formed as banded quartz in rock cavities, and that the area from Hanaishi to Pirika was mined for it from the Meiji 10s to the Showa 50s. According to the Pirika Paleolithic Museum, agate in the area was first recorded in 1857 by Matsuura Takeshirō; after an 1879 report, a geological survey found it most widely distributed at Jingobei-sawa (the Chinkobe River, around present-day Hanaishi), and full-scale mining began in 1902 when agate in state forest started to be sold off.

Hanaishi agate used for crafts was often heat-treated: the Pirika Paleolithic Museum notes that agate was "fired" to develop color during working, and that Hanaishi rough needed only about half a month of heating, compared with one to two years for rough from earlier sources. Agate stone tools from the Pirika site also show pink discoloration from heating. The sources consulted give no visual test for Hanaishi origin, so the origin of a bead rests on the seller's records.

According to the Pirika Paleolithic Museum, from 1902 nearly all Hanaishi agate was sent to Onyū village in Fukui Prefecture, home of the Wakasa agate craft; its quality and low price made it most of the raw material there, and from the late Meiji through the Taishō era it is thought to have been most of the domestic agate in circulation. Around the time of the Pacific War, falling output and cheap imported agate reduced its use. In Imakane itself, a local specialty products center with machinery and craftsmen opened in Hanaishi in 1986 and closed in 2006. Paleolithic people at the Pirika site also used agate, which makes up about 20% of its stone artifacts.