Kyoto's kimono artisans set sights on Indian saris to preserve Japanese heritage

In the early 1970s, the skilled artisans who created dazzling Kyoto-style "yuzen" kimonos could barely keep up with demand. Dyers, cloth cutters, designers and everyone in the associated businesses, from delivering the raw materials required for each kimono to the staff of the high-end shops where they were displayed, were working flat out as popularity soared.

Local companies specialising in this luxurious version of the most classic of Japanese attire used enough material to make 16.52 million kimonos in the financial year to March 1972, according to the Federation of Kyo-Yuzen Cooperatives. The assumption was the following year was going to be even better.

It was not apparent at the time, says Yukihide Sekiya, president of Sekiya Dyeing Co and a member of the Kyoto Craft Dyeing Cooperative, but that was high tide for the industry and it has been in gradual decline ever since.

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For the 2020 financial year, in contrast, Kyoto yuzen makers used enough material for just 270,000 kimonos.

"Opportunities for people to wear a kimono have decreased due to changes in the lifestyles of most Japanese people," Sekiya said. "Another reason is that people have started to wear Western-style clothes instead of [a] kimono when they go to a wedding or another important event."

"Right now, production is about 97 per cent down from our peak year," he admitted.

Given the crisis that has engulfed the industry and the 200 member companies of the cooperative, Sekiya says he concluded a dramatic shift was needed if the livelihoods of this uniquely Japanese heritage was to be preserved.

Sekiya asked himself if there was another clothing style that could make up for the decline of the kimono. "I thought about it a lot, and then it came to me. We needed to focus our efforts on making saris," he said.

There are a number of parallels between a kimono and a sari, with India's national dress typically using a single piece of cloth around 115cm wide and 5 metres long that is wound around the body. A kimono is usually manufactured from a roll of fabric 37cm wide and 13 metres long before it is cut into the required parts and stitched together.

But there are differences. The yuzen technique of dyeing was first developed by a fan painter named Miyazaki Yuzensei, who lived in Kyoto in the Genroku era of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Yuzen is a selection of techniques used to apply pictures or decorative dyed patterns to kimono fabric, classified into "tegaki," meaning freehand, or "kata," or standard, yuzen.

The designs incorporate intricate embroidery designs, eye-catching colours, gold leaf and other decorative elements. At the very highest levels of the art are kyo-tegaki-yuzen kimono, which are the ultimate in luxury and require the special touch of as many as 15 artisans, each with a unique skill. Made entirely by hand, a single kimono can sometimes take a year to complete.

To turn that know-how into making saris, the cooperative carried out research and employed specialists with subsidies provided by the prefectural government. The first sari was completed in April last year, with nine more producers since completing items.

The designs draw on both Japanese and Indian elements for inspiration. One sari incorporates the red and white plum blossoms depicted on a folding screen by famous landscape illustrator Ogata Korin, who created his most famous works in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Another is based on an elephant painted by Ito Jakuchu in the late 1700s.

The designs have been shown to the Indian ambassador to Tokyo, who expressed his admiration, the cooperative said, while the first exhibition of yuzen saris took place in Kyoto in January.

The saris have since been entrusted to an Indian clothing dealer who is talking to wealthy locals and carrying out other market research to determine the likely scale of demand.

Sekiya is cautiously optimistic.

"The reactions that we have had to the designs have been very positive, but we realise there will be barriers to entering the Indian market," he said. "The price of these items is quite high and we need to find the best way to market and sell them in India."

Sekiya is also bullish on the fact the number of wealthy Indians in a market of 1.4 billion people has increased.

Misha Janette, a Tokyo-based fashion critic and blogger, described the initiative as "awesome."

"There are a lot of parallels between the clothing culture of the two countries and I think this is a really good idea on many levels," she said.

"Japanese designers have tried in the past to create Western-style clothing out of kimono material, but it has never really caught on in a sufficiently large way," she said.

"Using kimono material for saris seems to me to be much closer to the original than trying to force kimono into Western-style designs. You won't buy a dress because it is made of kimono; you will buy it because it's pretty, and that's exactly what they are creating," she said.

"I also see India as a market with great potential, in particular because kimono material is special and should really be respected for the amount of work that goes into it, and I think that Indians will give it that respect."

Sekiya says the cooperative has discussed other potential markets for reworked versions of their traditional garments, but his priority now is India.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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