DESIGN
Kokontozai: KASHIYUKA’s Shop of Japanese Arts and Crafts /[Yuki Tsumugi Textile]
『カーサ ブルータス』2020年11月号より
November 8, 2020 | Design | KASHIYUKA’s Shop of Japanese Arts and Crafts | photo_Keisuke Fukamizu hair & makeup_Masako Osuga editor_Masae Wako translation_ Mika Yoshida & David G. Imber
Searching all of Japan for handcrafted items that express its heart and soul, our proprietor, KASHIYUKA, presents things that bring a bit of luxury to everyday life. What we discovered this time around is Yuki Tsumugi, with its 1500-year history in Ibaraki prefecture. Here originated a type of silk textile that is woven using a method unique in all the world.
At Okujun, the manufacturer and purveyor established in 1907 in the city of Yuki, Ibaraki prefecture. “Though the weave is fine and very dense, it’s light and fluffy,” KASHIYUKA says. The stamps on the authentic Yuki Tsumugi she holds certify that the fabric was produced using a loom and other tools that are extremely rare today.
I love traditional kimono. I’d like to have the skill needed to properly dress myself in it. Yuki Tsumugi is something those devoted to the art of wearing kimono yearn for. This visit took me to Yuki city in Ibaraki prefecture, the birthplace of this textile variety, registered by UNESCO as an Important Intangible Cultural Property.
Purchase No. 31【Yuki Tsumugi Textile】Beauty spun and woven by hand. A true wellspring of Japanese silken textile.
“Yuki Tsumugi appears in the verses of Japan’s oldest poetic collection, the Manyōshū, giving it a history dating back 1500 years,” explains Mr. Yoriyuki Okuzaka, fifth-generation proprietor of Okujun, the manufactory established in 1907. “It was treasured as an offering by those of the highest order during the ancient Nara period.” Up until the end of the Edo era in the late nineteenth century, those same producers were making textiles for the stylish and somewhat ostentatious samurai and wealthy merchant classes. But when the Meiji era arrived, introducing and popularizing fashions from the West, they started making clothes for women. Then, as now, textile production is divided by labor, with a measure of cloth to make a single garment of this type involving more than 40 separate steps to complete.
Natural fiber is hand-pulled from silkworm cocoons. One tan, a measurement of the quantity of fabric needed for a single kimono, will use as much as 35 kilometers!
Today I was first invited to observe the silk-spinning. The pinnacle of Tsumugi textile, known as Honba Yuki Tsumugi, uses hand-spun and loomed silk fiber thread, taken directly from the cocoon.
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