Month: July 2023

The veteran weaver incorporated gold thread one by one

Adjacent to the Tatami-mat room where Katsuyama-san showed me his silk yarn and Reiko-san showed me the kimono fabrics, was a studio where several veteran weavers were working on making Obis.

In this quiet countryside surrounded by rice fields, Katsuyama-san’s father, the fourth-generation Obi maker, opened this hand-weaving studio about 50 years ago.  While machine weaving became mainstream even in Nishijin, the father’s move seemed against the tide.

In the studio, several veteran weavers were working.  The studio had a hardwood floor, but directly underneath the loom where the weaver sat and worked, the earth was exposed. When asked, one of the Obi weavers explained to me that having enough humidity coming from the earth helps maintain a favorable silk condition when weaving.

The punctual sound of the loom’s movement was soothing.

One of the weavers opened a flat sheet of paper.  Inside were gold threads, ready to be woven into the Obi.  How can these thin threads be made into Obi fabrics, I wondered.

Back in the Tatami-mat room, Reiko-san showed me several Obi woven by those ladies.　　These Obi were all designed by Katsuyama-san.  Some of Shimura-san’s silk yarn was brought here from Nagano to be made into Obi.  The gold threads were meticulously woven together with the silk weft, one by one. 

It starts with planting mulberry trees

On a sunny day in February, at the rotary of a train station in Kyoto, I met Katsuyama-san, a fifth-generation Obi maker in Nishijin, and Reiko-san, for the first time. Marusugi-san, the person who introduced me to Katsuyama-san, also showed up.  We all got in a van and drove off. 

Marusugi-san is a third-generation kimono and silk fabric retailer. She had traveled to Seattle in the previous year in an attempt to promote their new product lines that use ultra-thin silk fabric and gold film.  I had helped her host a series of trunk shows in several places in Seattle.  We agreed to meet again on my next trip to Japan, hence this reunion in Kyoto.

Katsuyama-san’s van headed north.  Kyoto is bordered on three sides by mountains, so the further we went, the road became narrower and more winding.

The conversation in the van was mainly me talking.

“You know, the fabric you (I meant both Marusugi-san and Katsuyama-san) are selling is too expensive for clothing,” I said.  “Why don’t you position the fabric as art?  Why don’t you frame it and sell it through interior designers?  American homes are large and they’ve got huge walls, which they have to decorate anyway.”

“Why stick to only kimono and obi?  If you want to expand the market outside of Japan, expand the category.  Wealthy Americans spend far more money than Japanese for their home decoration.  I’ve seen so many Americans hanging vintage kimono or obi as a tapestry on the wall.”

Katsuyama-san nodded but didn’t say much. 

The van stopped in front of a one-story building in the middle of a rice field.  We all got out of the van and followed Katsuyama-san into the building.  On the left there was a tatami-mat room, maybe twelve tatami mats in total.  On one side of the room there were wall-to-wall shelves and drawers.  On the other side of the room, there were stacks of flat boxes. 

Katsuyama-san took out two bundles of thread and let me touch both.  The first one was softer and less shiny, but depending upon the angle, it reflected the light differently.  It felt ideal in my palm.  The threads of the second bundle looked all even, but didn’t have that rich texture.   

The woman in the black jacket was introduced to me as  Reiko Horie, CEO of Rakufulin洛風林, the company that sells Katsuyama-san’s obi.    

While I was still enjoying the softer texture of the first bundle of silk threads, Reiko-san (I use her first name because we are now good friends) started to explain what I was touching.  It was the silk thread made by Katsuyama-san’s company based in Nagano Prefecture.  In 2003 Katsuyama-san obtained property there and started growing mulberry trees to raise silkworms. 

Katsuyama-san used to use imported silk (the bundle I liked less).  One day he was asked by a national museum to work on the restoration of the fabric made in the fifteenth century.  The silk fabric was nothing like he had ever seen before.  Soft, light, graceful — ever since then he couldn’t forget that fabric.

When he visited Milan, Katsuyama-san encountered the same type of silk fabric in a men’s handkerchief. Quite impressed, he asked the shopkeeper where the fabric was made.  Not in Italy, but it was made in Japan, was the answer. 

Katsuyama-san did further research and found the person who made the handkerchief fabric, Shimura-san.  After a lot of persuading, Katsuyama-san successfully invited Shimura-san to be the co-founder of his silk farm.  Shimura-san moved from Okinawa to Nagano.

What is the difference between Katsuyama-san and Shimura-san’s silk and other silk?  It’s in the kind of mulberry they grow.  In their farm they grow two kinds of mulberry trees.  They feed the silkworms only the younger, softer leaves.  Shimura-san found through his years of research that it helps silkworms to produce thinner but stronger silk.

Once the silkworms create cocoons, their lives end before they come out of the cocoons.  Today’s main method of taking the lives of silkworms in the cocoons is to blow extremely hot air into the cocoons. The hot air eliminates humidity, making it easy to store the cocoons.  The silk’s natural texture, however, is somewhat lost. 

Shimura-san found a more natural and time-tested alternative: to salt the cocoons.  Shimura-san places cocoons in a wooden barrel and salts them for two weeks.  This way the silk’s natural texture and strength is maintained.

Making silk yarn as well as dissolving the sericin is done by hand at their farm. 

In the same farm where they grow mulberry and silk cocoons, they make silk yarn and weave the kimono fabric. Shimura-san uses mostly natural dyes extracted from local plants.  The main reason Shimura-san decided to join Katsuyama-san in Nagano is because he can be involved in the whole process in one place, giving him complete quality control of his products.

Katsuyama-san quietly said, “I’m making fabric that is to be worn.”  I felt ashamed of what I had said in the van.

Can they survive?

The word Nishijin 西陣 has multiple meanings. 

The literal translation into English is “the Western Base,” a military jargon. 

During the civil war called Onin no Ran 応仁の乱 (1467 – 1477), then the capital of Japan Kyoto became the battlefield of the two major samurai warlords.  The neighborhood where the west squad placed its base was called Nishijin.  The Onin no Ran and the wars that followed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries left Kyoto in ruins.   Many people fled Kyoto during that period. 

When the series of civil wars ended, people who had fled Kyoto gradually returned. 

Skilled weavers and other craftsmen in the textile making who used to serve the imperial court and aristocrats also returned, settled, and resumed their crafts in the district where the Western Base was once located. Hence the word “Nishijin” became equivalent to Kyoto’s textile district, as well as meaning kimono and obi textiles that were woven in this district as a whole. Weavers in Nishijin district formed a tight-knit industry community, which also became identified as Nishijin.   

During the Edo Era (1603 – 1868), Japan enjoyed more than 260 years of peaceful time under the Tokugawa Shogunate.   With its exquisitely sophisticated techniques and high quality, Nishijin textile was sought after by the ruling samurai clan as well as by the imperial court and aristocrats. Nishijin flourished by providing them with top-of-the-line textiles for their luxurious attire.

The beginning of Meiji Era (1868 – 1912) was a challenging time for Nishijin.   All of a sudden, its most prominent patron, the samurai clan, lost power because of the regime change, and the demand from the clan tanked. 

That was when Nishijin sent three people from its weavers’ community to France to learn the newest technology, Jacquard Loom.  Previously Nishijin used to employ a technique that required two people to handle one loom. Jacquard Loom, on the other hand, required only one person to handle it.

By implementing Jacquard Loom, Nishijin was able to boost its productivity as well as diversify its product lines to meet the need of a wider audience, the general public. 

With the rapid expansion of Japan’s economy after World War II, Nishijin enjoyed high growth.  Nishijin became a synonym for high-quality obis among common people like my mother.  She didn’t have to ask further if the retailer indicated that the obi was “Nishijin.” 

In the late 1980’s.  Japan’s economy was having its hay day.  So did Nishijin.  “Gacha-man” is a word I learned from a friend of mine who grew up in Nishijin.  “Gacha” imitates the sound of a Nishijin weaver moving the loom to add one weft.  “Man” is a short form of ichiman, or ten thousand yen, roughly a hundred dollars.  According to my friend, a weaver would earn a hundred dollars each time s/he moves one weft. This expression depicts how prosperous Nishijin once was. 

During the economic bubble, national kimono chain stores started to appear and soon became dominant, replacing many smaller independent retailers.  Many such stores took advantage of the ignorance of their customers, rather than taking time to educate them. Hiring many salespeople who didn’t have much knowledge of kimono, such chain stores employed aggressive sales tactics.  They manipulated gullible customers to purchase a grossly marked-up, expensive kimono of questionable quality. 

A set of kimono and obi would often be priced as much as a brand-new car.  And just like buying a car, many customers were obliged to pay in installments.  The aggressive sales tactics of kimono chain stores became so notorious that even TV channels created documentaries about their practice to warn people. 

I was recently out of college and working for an investment bank in Tokyo around that time.  Purchasing business suites was my top priority so I paid little attention to kimono.  Even if I was slightly interested in trying out kimono, having heard of horror stories, I was too intimidated to enter those big kimono stores I found here and there in downtown Tokyo.  

Then the economic bubble burst in 1990.  Japan’s so called “Lost Decade” became “Lost Decades” and is now stretching over three decades.  Kimono production plunged over the years, and so did textile production in Nishijin.  Many such national chain kimono stores went bankrupt. Also there were far fewer independent kimono retailers left.

The chart above is what I found on the Nishijin Textile Industry Association website.  The production of Nishijin’s textile is less than 10% of the hay days.  In such a dire situation, can Nishijin survive? 

In the course of pursuing my favorite kimonos and obis, I have met several people in Nishijin who are doing everything they can to survive and thrive.  I will keep on writing about what I encounter…