| A doncho designed by Sheila Hicks |
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The International Impulse
To celebrate the opening of its new cultural center, the textile town of Kiryu in Gunma Prefecture sought one of the world's most renowned textile and fiber artists, Sheila Hicks, to create a flat theater curtain, a doncho. Hicks utilized the diverse expertise of the kimono-weaving town in a collaborative effort, including the contemporary ideas of Kiryu native Junichi Arai, a "textile planner" of international fame. The doncho comprises a background layer reminiscent of vertical hanging obi sashes, on which is placed a random composition of pressed, abstract forms. These are woven of scintillating, light-catching fiberglass and polyester filaments and dyed with a high-tech, pressure-vacuum dye-deposition technique. This doncho has set a standard in many ways, not only because it is the first doncho made outside the traditional workshops of Kyoto, but also because the town enlisted the talent of an international artist to create the design and coordinate the production within the context of the textile industry of Kiryu.
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Weaving Kijoka Banana
Fiber Cloth |
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A Loom in Every Home
Outside Japan's cities and towns, it is no exaggeration to say that a century ago every household had at least one operative loom. Young women learned weaving either from mothers and grandmothers or from mothers-in-law. This meant that handwoven textiles were a part of everyday life in Japan, and this condition lasted, in part, until the middle of this century. In no uncertain terms, Japan is a textile country.
There are four main fibers used in Japanese textiles: hemp, ramie, cotton, and silk. Hemp and ramie were the main fibers for the common people until cotton cultivation became widespread in the 18th century. In eastern Japan, these two fibers were still the most common as late as the beginning of the 19th century.
Hemp and ramie are both excellent for summer, but hardly suitable for cold winters and not really comfortable against the skin except in the most sultry weather. Ramie is not well known in the West; it is a common garden weed (known as choma or karamushi) of great intrusive vigor that can grow just about anywhere. Ramie cloth resembles hemp at its finest. In more remote areas of northern Japan, bast fibers such as paper mulberry fiber, some tree bark fiber, and wisteria were also woven into cloth, but these fibers, however quaint we think them today, are scratchy, cold, and quite uncomfortable for garments. The banana fiber used in Okinawa is receiving much attention today, but it, also, is only practical in a tropical clime, not in a wintry country.
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| Wedding gown, Nishijin Textiles |
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Silk--The Aristocratic Fiber
Silk always has been and almost certainly will continue to be the aristocrat of textiles. For centuries, it was the pillar of Japanese export trade, even when the shogunate isolated the country from all but minimum foreign contact, and continued to be so until the radical economic changes between the wars of this century.
Sericulture was practiced ubiquitously throughout the country; farmhouses with more than one story used the top story for silkworm cultivation. In the peace and prosperity of the Edo period (1600-1868), fine silks were much in demand by the samurai class and then the affluent merchants, who surpassed the samurai in economic power. Sumptuary laws did little to stiffle the wearing of fine silk garments; money often was expended on undergarments rather than on the immediately visible outer kimono.
Commoners were prohibited from wearing fine silk fabrics. The only silk they were allowed to wear was cloth made by spinning silk floss in the same manner as cotton or wool. (Threads for fine silks are not spun, but are pulled out and reeled from a silkworm cocoon.) Fabric woven with such spun silk thread has a slub and superficially resembles the cotton worn by commoners. Such fabric is known as tsumugi (pongee in Engish). In an ironic reversal, today tsumugi is among the most sought and treasured of silk fabrics.
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| Dyeing Yarn, Oitama Pongee |
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A Galaxy of Weaves
The continuous demand for Japanese silks both at home and abroad served to stimulate the creative impulse of the weavers. Plain weaves, including chirimen crepe; twill, both plain and figured; plain and figured satins; and damasks were produced, but however complex the woven pattern, monochrome textiles that would lend themselves to opulent decoration were preferred to elaborate polychrome weaves. The extravagant Noh drama costumes may be an exception. Still, vat dyeing, painting, shaped resist (shibori), embroidery, and applied metallic leaf, paste resist, stencil resist, and so forth were used to create textiles of stunning complexity and beauty (see Dyeing).
Ikat (Japanese: kasuri) techniques today are more popular than figured twills and satins. This technique combines weaving and dyeing: the pattern is calculated on the yarn, the yarn is bound or otherwise resisted on the calculated areas of the pattern, dyed, then woven. The calculated pattern emerges in the process of weaving, but with threads slightly and charmingly not aligned, resulting in soft, fuzzy outlines of design motifs.
Kyoto has always been the heart of Japan's silk weaving, and, since the late 15th century, weaving was centered in the Nishijin area of that city. Yet numerous provincial towns have long and vigorous histories as silk-weaving centers, among them Kiryu, Tokamachi, and Ashikaga. |
The Future
It is a strange fact, but the wealth of textile techniques in Japan has not attracted the same interest from students of other countries as have Japanese ceramics. Unlike ceramic genres, many Japanese textiles have disappeared from everyday use. The Japanese kimono is no longer daily wear. The impact on the textile industry of this fact is immense. With an uncertain future, the Japanese weaving industry has been striving to combine leading-edge technology with the power of tradition. The two-fold energy of such a combination, it is hoped, will allow new concepts in textiles, open new markets, and invigorate interest in the unique fabrics of Japan. |
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