A story of Rakufulin 洛風林
I was intrigued by Reiko-san, the CEO of Rakufulin. For me, “Nishijin” was equivalent to “tradition.” My image of CEO of a Nishijin Obi company was a serious-looking, older man. Reiko-san is far from it, must be at least 15 or 20 years younger than I am. Why is such a young, beautiful woman running a Nishijin company?
Here is her family history that Reiko-san told me when I visited the Rakufulin office for the first time. It started with her grandfather.
Reiko-san’s grandfather, Takeshi Horie, was born in 1907 in Fukui Prefecture, which borders Kyoto to its south and faces the Japan Sea. Horie-san’s family was a kimono retailer, so it was a natural career path for him to be apprenticed to a prominent Obi maker in Kyoto when young.
He was well-trained there, and when he became independent in 1952, he named his own company Rakufulin 洛風林. His former employer as well as his mentor had a nickname Rakuen-o 洛園翁, and allowed Takeshi-san to use one of the characters for his new company name.
When he started Rakufulin, Takeshi-san introduced two unique aspects to his business.
First was his Obi designs.
When very few Japanese traveled abroad, Takeshi-san visited so many countries, especially Asian countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, retracing the ancient Silk Road. He collected various old textiles made in those regions. Inspired by the patterns of those ancient textiles, he created new designs for Obi.
Takeshi-san was also involved in the Mingei Movement with people like Kawai Kanjiro and Yanagi Soetsu. The Mingei Movement found beauty in ordinary crafts and functional utensils.
Most Nishijin Obi makers in those days had constant orders from the Imperial Court and other upper-class customers for traditional designs. Although Takeshi-san was considered an outlier in Nishijin, he never hesitated to pursue new designs. His motto was “A truly beautiful thing is always new.”
Second was how he collaborated with weavers.
Takeshi-san chose not to hire weavers as his employees, but carefully selected a handful of weavers with different skills, and formed a team of what he called Dojin 同人.
Takeshi-san played a role of a designer and a producer. Depending on the Obi design, he collaborated with the weaver on a certain technique that would best fit that particular design.
Takeshi-san as a producer and the weavers were equals. This horizontal relationship made it easier for both parties to bounce off their ideas and create new things.
When Tetsuo-san, Takeshi-san’s son and Reiko-san’s father, took over Rakufulin, he founded a private museum called Orient 織園都 to archive all the textiles that both his father and himself collected over time.
When her father’s health deteriorated and passed, Reiko-san succeeded as CEO. Her younger sister, Aiko-san, also joined the family business as a designer. The middle sister, Mayuko-san, takes care of the back office including accounting.
The three sisters take pride in keeping the business philosophy of Rakufulin, “a truly beautiful thing is always new.”