As a preface to my babbling about how my day went, lemme put a bit of background of what Nishijin is.
"Nishi-jin"（西陣 = west camp）derived its name from the location of craftmen settlement upon they returned to Kyoto after being fled away to Nara/Sakai during Ohnin Civil War in the late 1400s. It's known as the flourish weaving village supported by the patronage of both the Imperial court and great samurai lords from that time onward.
Nishijin textiles are most concisely characterized as diagonally woven and patterned fabrics made from died yarn. Each step of the production involves many complex processes which requires specialized skills of artisans. Nishijin is, therefore, not a large single company, but a group of small companies in which specializes in certain procedures of this production (分業制）. Mainly, the processes can be divided into 5 major areas: (1) planning and making MON (planning the most basic designs and structures of the textile), (2) preparation of materials (i.e. necessary threads + thread dyeing), (3) preparation of powerlooms (or the jacquard and design interface devices for weaving), (4) weaving, and (5) finishing.
The place we visited today was thread-dyeing and obi-weaving houses.
Ok... the story from now on is off the top of my head. Let's see if I remember all the things they explained today without any note-taking. Sorry if some information is distorted. haha =P (maybe this is why I am blogging about this at this moment. I think I've started to forget some stuff already!!)
① Shitanishi Thread Dyeing House
According to Shitanishi-san, there are only 2 places left in Japan that make raw silk . They would raise silkworms, fed them to develop into cocoons. Then, they would soak these cocoons to soften them and start forming the yarn. Each thread is made of 7 twisted yarns from 7 cocoons. The amazing thing is that each cocoon can produce yarn of approximately 1,100 meters long! The texture of this yarn is rather rough. In order to make it shiny silky and healthy looking, they have to boil it with certain chemical substances to peel off the outer skin. The finished product is what is used for thread dyeing process.
Here at this dyeing house, the process can be done using machine or by hands. However, as we all know, craft made by hand often gains higher tender care from artisans. Shitanishi-san demonstrated us the dyeing process by hand. He's in his late 70s and had been doing this for ages, so he doesn't really need any measurement for color used. He used his feeling.
In order to dye the thread, the water has to be heated up to approximately 60-70 degree celcius. Put the thread in, boil it up and simmer it. Then, add the color powder in. Soak the thread, twist to dry, then soak it back again. To final touch the product, he added some acid in the tank. Then soak and twist it again until excess water is drained out from the thread.
Those threads are then hung to naturally dry up undershade. Sunlight and unnatural ways of drying kill the quality of threads. Threads in the winter time is therefore different from those finished in the summer. This threads are then delivered to weavers.
② Sugi Mura Obi Weaving House
Obi is a finely decorated wide piece o cloth that works both as belt and as a corset in the Kimono dressing. It's also considered as a top of the weaving mastery. Here in this weaving house, the son designs the obi and his mom weaves (though I'm sure the son also can). The obi weaving house would order threads of the desired colors from thread dyers. However, most of the times, the feel and imagination of such color is different among designers and dyers. They actually have thread palette, but a lot of times the dyed threads do not match the exact colors. So they usually have to carry out conversation to adjust the color to the range that is acceptable both parties.
This weaving house was making a pretty modern looking obi. They had the design put up in the loom underneath the weaving bar that weavers can refer to at each step of weaving processes. Here at this house, they use 660 vertical threads for obi making (for the one they currently are making). This is relatively low if compared to the approximately 1200 - 2400 vertical threads used in the machine woven ones. Also, in the machine-made obis, they usually put film-like substance in the weaving to make it a bit hard and emphasize certain patterns on the obi. The feel is rather different from the 660/.
The interesting is that... I've always thought that modern looking obi should be easier to sell than those high-end looking ones. BUT... I was wrong. The reason is simple. At the old times when people still wore Kimonos as their usual outfits, they usually kept the luxury looking obis for special occasions and wore semi-formal or modern looking kimono style instead. In that sense, the modern obis would be sold at larger amount. However, at present time, people don't wear kimono on regular basis anymore. They always keep Kimonos for special occasions like wedding, performances, and the like. Ordinary kimono wearing people are relatively few. As a consequence, the official or traditional looking obis would oversell those in the modern styles.
(3) The Orinus Museum of Handmade Fabrics Promotion Foundation
The place was established to popularize the culture of dyeing, weaving and technical art. It's more of the place to see exhibition of the weaving masterpiece. There were also some products sold here.
We had our tea break with some discussion afterward. They explained that silk is known to have originated in China. It became known in Europe and other parts of the world through trading along silk road. The pattern of weaving here was highly influenced by the pattern arrived from silk road, however, later deviated into their own Japanese traditional style. They claimed that silk in Japan is to be the best silk in the world. I'm sure of their high quality, but I doubt this statement though.... what say you?
2 comments:
ผ้าไหมญี่ปุ่นสวยมาก โดยเฉพาะสีที่หลากหลายและสม่ำเสมอ ลายที่ทำได้ก็มีรูปแบบที่อิสระกว่าของบ้านเรามาก ลายของเรายังอยู่ในกรอบของรูปทรงเรขาคณิต ถ้ามีเครื่องมือวัดความใจเย็น คนเหล่านี้คงได้คะแนนเต็มแน่นอน
I don't know if Japanese silk is the best in the world or not - i guess each country would be proud of their own work too. But thanks for sharing about this experience of yours. Love the colourful threads!
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