カテゴリー: Terminology

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Miyatsukuchi (side slit of kimono)

It referes to the small opening in the side of traditional Japanese clothing for women and children (e.g. kimono and yukata) located where the sleeve meets the bodice, below the armpit. We aren’t so aware of it usually, but say sometimes to explain how to wear the kimono like “pull the side slits” or “get your hand in the side slit to fix the kimono.”

The kimonos for men don’t have the side slit. It isn’t known clearly why the kimonos of women and children have this miyatsukuchi slits; they say that children wore their kimonos putting a piece of string through the slits in the old days. As for the kimonos for women, it is thought that it might have been put to facilitate the movement in the times when the obi became wider. It isn’t inconvenient at all usually if without it but would become necessary when you set ohawhori; the established theory is that it was born at the same time as the ohashori was thought of. When the side slits are left open, the singlet whichi is an underwear will be visible. Pull the underarm sides of the kimono right and left, smoothing out the wrinkles, so that they come just to the side slits. You can narrow the gap as much, even though not closing it.

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Shijira weave

Shijira weave is a type of grained cloth, which is wrinkled on purpose by using the difference of thread’s tension or the thickness. Or, it describes the type of texture.

The most famous production area is Awa (now Tokushima prefecture), and is said to be originated in the beginning of Meiji era.
It is said that a woman living in Awa invented it, and according to the story, a cotton cloth became wet in the rain, and when she dried it under the sun, she saw interesting grains forming by the shrinking of the cloth; inspired by this, she made some improvement resulting this type of weave. Because of its origin, Awa-shijira is basically made of cotton. They are flat woven, but some warps are consisted of several threads, and by this unbalance the grain is formed. In other regions, shijira is woven with various materials , and for example, Hamamatsu in Shizuoka prefecture is famous for cotton/hemp shijira. Shijira weave is suitable for summer kimonos, for the contact area with your skin is small, and it doesn’t cling damply on you by your sweat. Moreover, inexpensive mass production items are also made, and are used in bed sheets, etc.

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Thick silk cloth (Shioze)

The word “Shioze no obi (obi of thick silk cloth)” is often heard; “Shioze” is a type of Habutae silk babric, and refers the fabrics with ribs made of thick weft and thin warp. As it is the piece-dyed cloth, it is widely used for the types of obi with the hand drawn Otaiko pattern. Because it is easy to fasten and hardly comes loose as well as sets off the Otaiko pattern, this obi is very popular.

The dyed obi is considered generally to be casual, so the Shioze no obi is mostly casual Nagoya obi, but still we find some writers who make double-woven obi with the thick silk cloth. Also, it is looked as of rather higher rank among dyed obis and sometimes matched with kimono of undecorated fabric of any color but black. Because Shioze no obi is thin and light, Iit can go with unlined kimono and you don’t feel uncomfortable. Another reason for the popularity is that you can use it from September until June next year except in midsummer when you wear light kimono. “Silk gauze Shioze” is used in high summer; a kind of Shioze with a certain translucency. Because it is not just summery and looks cool but also has a moderate hardness, so this Shioze is used often for the summer neckpiece which needs some stiffness, too.

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Habutae is a kind of flat woven cloth which is made of untwisted, unrefined silk threads, and the luster and smooth texture is the characteristic. The widely accepted theory for the origin of the name “Habutae”, is that two threads are passed as a warp into the Osaha, an item of a loom where you pass the warp into; so the threads are doubled. It is identified that in the Edo era the word “Habutae” was already used, and is also a pronoun for soft and smooth things, such as Habutae-mochi, and Habutae-dango.

It was previously used as Kimono’s outer fabric, but it is rarely seen nowadays. The reason is not clear, but it is said that sometimes the color doesn’t develop nicely when dyed, so this might be one of the reasons. Nowadays, it is used as a white cloth for Dou-ura (lining for body part), making use of its smoothness and lightness. Originally, people used to wear underwear made of Habutae under Tomesode. The Tomesode’s wings are mostly made of Habutae, which is a trace of that past tradition. “Shioze” used for Obi is an abbreviation for “Shioze-habutae”, and is one kind of Habutae, but is thick and hard because it uses thick threads and is woven densely.

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Rinzu

Rinzu is silk cloth woven by the RInzu method, which uses unrefined silk threads. Rinzu method is a way of weaving which warp and woof are not woven closely, but woven with intervals, and it has a soft and satin-like characteristic.  On the other hand it is not that durable, and if the thread is pulled, for instance by getting caught by the corner of something, it is easily torn. Satin used for western clothes is a typical example for Rinzu weaves. It is also commonly used for kimono, but is also popular for obi-age and long-juban materials.

Rinzu weave is suitable for emphasizing the patterns, so many Rinzu has patterns woven into it. These patterns are called Jimons. If you want to differentiate them by the existance of Jimon, you call them Mon-rinzu (with Jimon), and Muji-rinzu (without Jimon). The Rinzu weave itself is the characteristic, so the threads are twisted in various ways. Smooth kimono fabrics are commonly called RInzu, and uneven fabrics are called Chirimen, but originally Chirimen is characterized by its thread, so these two can’t be compared directly. There are fabrics called RInzu-chirimen, which Rinzu weaves are made of Chirimen threads.

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Crepe

The crape is a silk fabric on which there is a fine convexo-concave pattern on the whole, it is often used for a kimono, neckpiece on a kimono, and obi sash also. Crape has been favored as a material for wrapping cloth or handicraft, It is a very popular kimono fabric.
It is made from silk originally, however, that of chemical fiber has also been distributed in large quantities in these days. The convexo-concave pattern of the fabric surface is called “shibo”, the crape with a large shibo is the old crape or the devil crape. A well known “hitokoshi-crape” is a typical example of the crape with a fine shibo. The crape is woven using untwisted warps and strong twisted yarns as wefts.

When the woven fabric is refined (that is, removing oil and such on the thread surface), twisted wefts change into untwisted, and then the shibo can be obtained. In Hitokoshi crepe, we put one by one the hard twist yarn twist twisting right and the hard twist yarn twist twisting left. It is called a “Hitokoshi” by putting one of the numbers.  The devil crape is called “Futakoshi”, on the other hand, because we put two pieces of twisted right and two pieces of twisted left. The thread which is not refined is not dyed neatly. Because the crape is refined after being woven, it is dyed after weaving, and then a piece-dyed kimono is completed.

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Bashofu

Bashofu is a fabric made from a plant called basho, which is classified in the same family as the banana. The fablic has been woven since the 13th century and has a very long history. It was widely used for daily clothing in Okinawa. It is said that each family had their own basho fields. However, due to the the chaos during the war and the postwar period, and the changes of the times, the tradition and the history of bashofu was almost disappearing.

Under such circumstances, owing to the effort of people who tried to revive bashofu as a specialty products, bashofu gradually became known to the area other than Okinawa and it is now handled as a rare summer kimono at a high rate. Due to the drop in ito-basho output and the lack of craftsman successor, the production level of bashofu is still low. However, the activities to transmit to posterity are moving forward as it was re-examined as a traditional craft. The characteristics of bashofu are the dry texture and the fabric that breathes, as you can understand from how it is appreciated even in the hot Okinawa. The yarn dyeing with natural dyes is the basic style but there are bashofu using Okinawan method called bingata.

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Nishijinori

Nishijinori , the brand name of one of the main obi sash belts in Japan, refers to collective name for the fabric produced in Nishijin area of Kyoto, not limited to particular ways of weaving. Although it includes “Kara ori”, Chinese-styled weaving, and “Tzuzure ori”, weaving technique to show raised patterns, any types of Nishijin weavings are dyed before weaving.

Actually, what they call Nishijin is not a name of particular place but the areas as large as three square kilometers where craftsmen and those engaged in fabric businesses get together.History of Nishijin fabric dates back more than 1200 years ago but it was the Imperial Court’s order during Heian Period to weave fabric for them and get together weavers at Nishijin area that the fabric became the special product of the town.Mass production of Nishijin fabric started in Meriji Period when Jacquard loom was imported to Japan. Before the mechanization, the weave was woven by Sorabiki loom woven by two weavers. Today Nishijin weave introduces computer aided design and keep developing new and innovative designs.

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Sakizome

Sakizome is to dye a yarn before the weaving process and the product itself using such yarn are also called so.
The sakizome kimono is called “woven kimono” and the sakizome obi is called “woven obi”. In contrast to this, atozome is to dye a fabric woven by a white yarn.While sakizome allows to dye into the core and retain the color from losing and fading, the color can’t be changed by dyeing later or a pattern cannot be added later. The texture of the original yarn may change since the process for dyeing will be added to the raw yarn. Tsumugi is a typical sakizome product which has different individuality based on the production regions.

The most simple sakizome product is without a pattern but there is not that much product without any pattern.
As for kimono, stripe pattern and lattice pattern are woven using several colored yarn in general. Kasuri method is used for more elaborate product. As for obi, a more elaborate pattern will be woven. There are Hakata-ori and Nishijin-ori for typical sakizome obi.

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Kasuri

Kasuri is a cloth woven by yarn-dyed threads to produce designs. It may sound easy to do, but actually, it requires high techniques and time to make as the yarns should be dyed back-calculated from the designs on the completed cloth and the cloth should be woven as designed.The dyed yarns are called “kasuri ito”, and further classified as “tate kasuri” (warp kasuri), “yoko karusi” (weft kasuri) or “tateyoko kasuri” (warp and weft kasuri) according to the direction/directions in which the yarn is used.

Kasuri ito is dyed after the yarn is partly twined with other threads to leave such parts undyed.For dyeing the yarn, most of the producers follow the method to twine the yarn with anti-dyeing threads, but there is another way of doing this by weaving in anti-dyeing threads by a weaving machine. This method allows delicate dying that hands cannot do, and for example, the elavorate designs of Oshima Tsumugi are produced by the yarns from this method.A hand woven Kasuri is a treasure that requires several months of work of a highly skilled craftman.At present, the techniques are preserved as ones of the traditional craftworks, while for the products for the general public, the production processes have been widely mechanized to achieve affordable costs.