Weaving Cultures—Kimono in Transformation

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Bunmei Kaika--Civilization and Enlightenment. This was the slogan that the Meiji government rallied behind. It implied the superiority--material, military, technological, and social standard--of the West. In every way, the Japanese government looked westward: ports were opened, trade and travel were encouraged, diplomatic relations with European countries were sought, and the Meiji Restoration modeled its cultural, political, and economic reform off of favored Western legislations and constitutions. This emulation of the west manifested in the fashion scene as well. In the military, soldiers and generals sported stiff waistcoats and high stockings that combined the dress of various European soldiers; as early as 1872, the emperor cut off his top knot and abandoned the traditional kimono in public appearances; in the same year, all government officials were required to wear Western business attire for official meetings. Many studies and essays point to this choice of the Western suits and gowns over the Japanese kimono as an indicator of a shift in the country’s national identity. However, this definity dichotomy of one attire versus the other oversimplifies the transition of the country and limits it to the top tiers of Japanese society. The transition, which was actually much more understated and gradual, manifested in the evolution of the kimono, and is not easily noticeable by perfunctory glances. Only with a comparative examination of the kimono over the course of Edo and Meiji Japan, supported by corresponding historical and literary context, will the changes in the style and material of the kimono be revealed. Western influence seeped into Japanese society slowly and subtly, rather than overtaking it all at once, and over time, the separate strands of Western ideas, technology, and aesthetics, became weaved into the fabric of Japanese apparel, forming a new attire that was true to neither Japan nor the West but one that harbored both cultures.

I. “They Say:” The Case of the Black or White

Many scholars have studied some individuals’ choices of the complete, one-time switch from the kimono to Western attire. As previously mentioned, the military and government officials were all mandated, by 1872, to dress in the corresponding Western attire to their roles. The London-educated Genrō Itō Hirobumi, an extra-constitutional oligarchy who had played a great role in drafting the Meiji constitution and continued to wield great influence over the government as counselor of the emperor, especially saw clothing as a political tool to prove to the Western treaty powers that the Japanese were just as civilized as Europe. He extended the decree for government officials to wear Western attire in public appearances so much that even his family members were scarcely seen in Japanese costume.

While some were strong proponents of the Western attire, others vehemently opposed what they saw was a distasteful abandonment of traditional values. The samurai status, formerly the esteemed class of the country that wielded tremendous political and financial power, was rendered obsolete by the Westernized doctrine of the new era. The disaffected samurai in the southwest of the country, collectively called the Satsuma Domain, sought to reestablish traditional values and expunge Western influences. In 1877 the Satsuma Domain raised arms against the government under the warcry “Honour the Emperor and expel the foreigner” was the warcry of the Satsuma Domain. The issue of dress, among others, were chief in the samurai’s grievances. “Some time ago we were deprived of our swords, and now we are ordered to cut off our topknots, a fashion which has come down to us from the divine era,” their manifesto read. Interestingly, the rebellion created a visual dynamic that symbolizes the battle between traditional and Western dress. During the nine long months of battle, the Satsuma Domain, led by Saigō Takamori, donned the silk and cotton tunics and loose pants of the old Japanese warrior. Across the battlefield, the imperial army wore wool uniforms with shiny buttons and sharp, padded shoulders in imitation of the British and French. At the last battle, Takamori’s forces were outnumbered seven to one, and the last of the samurai, in their traditional garments, committed seppuku. Scholars love to evoke this image of the samurai in the traditional chain armour and balberds against the army in tall caps and buttoned jackets as a dramatization of the conflict between traditions and the West, but while this incident provided a clean and straightforward metaphors for the narrative of Westernization, it masks the complexity of a greater and more comprehensive social movement.

Like the Satsuma Rebellion, Empress Haruko’s switch in attire has also been cited as the inflection point of the transition. In the spring and summer of 1886, with the recent construction of the Rokumeikan, a chic social hall in Tokyo, Japan saw the mass infiltration of Western fashion among the elite- and middle-class women. That autumn, despite being originally hesitant, Empress Haruko reflected this trend in her choices of attire at the imperial garden party. The effect was originally jarring to the spectators. With the warm rays of the golden sun casting upon the perfect rows of chrysanthemums, peeresses and guests who donned splendid brocade robes and the Kimigayo, the Japanese national anthem, playing, the scene was “wonderfully picturesque and distinctly Japanese,” Eliza Scidmore, an American writer who attended the party, proclaimed in her journal. The empress and her train of attendants stepped out to the melody of the national song. But what met every attendants’ anticipation was not the dignity and brilliance of the heavy-silked hakama and the loose, dull kimono; rather, Empress Haruko and her attendants entered in tight-fitting, excessively adorned western gown. “All the soft, pink reflections from the clouds of cherry blossoms in the Hama Rikiu palace garden could not give the groups of little women in dark, ugly, close-fitting gowns any likeness to the beautiful assemblages of other years.” Scidmore criticized:

Gone were poetry and picturesqueness.

Progress and Philistia were come.

The empress had issued a court circular justifying what she deemed an “improvement:” “From olden times the progress of culture depended on conforming to the old order… But now we can no longer restrict ourselves to bowing from a kneeling position, but will have to observe the Naniwa style of bowing while standing…” Empress Haruko’s choice to switch to Western attire moved many women of the imperial family and the upper classes to also begin switching to the bodycon gowns. This phenomena, combined with the empress’ justification, scholars have argued, was a consequence of greater Westernization and clearly demonstrates the switch in national identity.

Scholars point to the new attires of the military officials, the government employees, the emperor, and the empress switched their attires as moments during which a new Japanese national identity was established. However, these were outstanding individuals that were, by no means, representative of the Japanese people or the country as a whole. While studying these separate instances of conflict between Western and Japanese clothing, many have expressed a lament and nostalgia not dissimilar from that of Eliza Scidmore. Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, a key Japanese writer during the Shōwa and Taishō eras, was one who saw the transformation from classical Japan to modern day Japan as a dichotomy that disregarded a grace period, or the gray between the black and white. In his essay In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki’s regret for the loss of traditional aesthetic is palpable. Without doubt, Tanizaki saw the fashion transformation in the country as a choice of one over the other as well. “I suppose it is hard for those who praise the fleshy beauty we see under today’s bright lights to imagine the ghostly beauty of those older women,” Tanizaki wrote. However, because Tanizaki wrote at a time during which Japan was still transforming, his comparison is not as clear cut as he makes it sound. The ghostly beauty of the older women that he sees is limited to his mother and older geisha that he encounters, who were probably not immune to Western influences during the Meiji Era. Conversely, the flesh beauty under Shōwa and Taishō lights can still trace its Japanese roots, however faint. Thus, these comparisons that render the transformation a matter of black and white gloss over the rebuilding of national identity that happens over time in the Japanese people, the transformation that manifests in the changing kimono.

II. The Gray of Shadows--Pre-1868

Scarlet is a color

Quick to fade…

How can it compare

With those long-accustomed robes

Dyed in the gray of acorn.

Kimono, taken literally, means “thing to wear.” It was first adopted from Chinese court robes during the seventh century. Over time, this specific kind of loose-fitting garment with a straight, flowing silhouette became so pervasive that it took the word kimono for a name. The emergence of the kimono as the national dress was due to its appropriateness to the Japanese lifestyle--its open sleeves added breathability for the gown, making it well-suited for the semi-tropical climate of the country, and the wrap-style allows the wearer to sit down on the ground and get up more easily. More so than other attires and people of the other countries, the kimono is more closely linked in the Japanese way of life and especially to the wearer of the Kimono. American anthropologist Liza Dalby argued in her book about the Kimono in transition, “Something of the original wearer’s soul has irrevocably imbued the garment. Once worn, a kimono defines itself as part of the discourse of Japanese life, unquotable out of context.”

The kimono is made from four separate strips of cloth constituting the sleeves and the front and back panels. The sleeve opening varies in sizes: the kosode has a small sleeve opening, the ōsode had large openings, the hirosobe opening was wide, and the furisode, the one modernly called the “kimono” has long swinging sleeves. The original division between silk kimonos and those made from bast fibers made way for the softer, easier to produce cotton kimonos in the seventeenth century. The outer kimono are usually of dark or neutral colors. Uniquely Oriental motifs, such as the Genji wheel, Buddhist images, or subtle derivations from nature, were imprinted upon the gown via a variety of different dyeing, weaving, printing, and embroidery techniques. Regardless of the print, they were usually fashioned in only a peripheral part of the gown, most commonly the lower hem or the inside front panels, leaving the majority of the outer surface of the robe bare and plain.

The subdued style of the pre-Meiji period kimono was largely a consequence of the social and political climate of the time. The Confucian ideologies of frugality and status quo that dominated the Edo period looked down upon ostentation and flashiness, especially that of the merchant class, which was believed to be flaunting clothes beyond their class. Moreover, the merchant class, then positioned at the lower end of the hierarchy, was beginning to accumulate wealth while the ruling upper class was becoming increasingly impoverished. Thus, the outward demonstration of wealth through fashion threatened to shake the established social ladder. Social satirist Ihara Saikaku condemned the inkling of extravagant fashion that the merchant classes and the design books had began to promote. “Even the robes of the awesome high-ranking families used to be of nothing finer than Kyoto habutae. Black clothing with five crests cannot be called inappropriate,” he wrote.

Legal measures, too, restricted the fashion to a uniformizing dullness. A series of sumptuary edicts cemented this view. By 1617, gold and silver leaf appliqué were outlawed for certain classes; by 1656, anyone wearing “splendid clothes” or bearing a “presumptuous appearance” risked detention; by 1657, merchants were only allowed to wear a very specific few colors and styles; by 1663, the amount of money that could be spent on clothing for the royal family and the feudal families was limited; in the same year, an order decreed that urged families to refrain from replacing or buy new clothes. Thus, by the joint efforts of social and legal conventions, the aesthetics of the kimono in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had become severely austere and limited.

In attempting to articulate the aesthetic phenomenon of the subdued, dark attire of the Japanese people, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki evoked the motif of shadows that is unique to the Japanese aesthetics. “Such is our way of thinking--” he writes, “We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the pattern of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.” In the case of the kimono and the women, the Japanese finds beauty in the contrast between the darkness of the clothes, the blackened teeth, the hair and that draws out the pale, delicate face. “Daughters and wives of the merchant class wore astonishingly severe dress,” Tanizaki observed, “Their clothing was in effect no more than a part of the darkness, the transition between darkness and face.” The kimonos that Tanizaki recalls his mother wearing was always of some shade of gray, sometimes endowed with small, modest patterns. Not only is the shadow in contrast a manifestation of beauty itself, but per Tanizaki, the willowing kimono also hid the imperfections of the Japanese female physique. All of this-- the darkness, the lack of a full body, the hiding--Tanizaki terms the “ghostly beauty.” Pre-Meiji era Japanese attire was thus characterized by subdued colors, billowing silhouette that enshrouded the body, and modest materials. These characteristics were at once the product of the economic, political, and social conventions of the time. Economically, the merchant class were exhibiting wealth greater than that of the ruling class and were, by the views of some, reaching to live beyond their status via material goods such as fanciful outfits. Pursuant of the Confucian ideals of upholding the status quo, a series of legislations were decreed in order to contain the fashion of the wealthier classes to that matching their lower status. Socially, the kimono was most practical for the Japanese lifestyle and also most aligned with their unique perception of beauty. Before the Meiji Era, the landscape of Japanese fashion blossomed in the gray of acorn, emitting a ghostly beauty fully graspable only by the Japanese, yet within these fields were sowed the seeds of a more colorful, more vibrant age.

III. The Brilliance of the Sun--Meiji Era

We are no longer the moon.

Today we are truly the sun.

We will build shining golden cathedrals

at the top of crystal mountains,

East of the land of the rising sun.

After three centuries of strictly controlled engagement with the rest of the world, the Meiji Era finally opened the doors of the country towards the rest of the world. From the opening of the ports in the 1850s to the continuously increasing international trade, an influx of Western technology, idea, and materials entered the landscape of gray acorns and ghostly beauty. The new technologies and materials included those that influenced the production of textiles and clothing, and it brought new horizons to the Japanese fashion scene. Japan sent various scholars and artisans abroad to exchange textile and dyeing technologies. From 1872 to 1880, artisans from the Nishijin district of Kyoto, the silk capital, was sent to Lyon, France and Vienna, Austria, Germany, and other fashion hubs to learn about Western weaving and dyeing methods. These artisans returned with new and lacquered looms and the latest methods of dyeing. On the homefront, the Kyoto provincial government established the Somedono (Dyeing palace) and the Oridono (Weaving Palace), which join together to be the Kyoto Orimono Kaisha (Kyoto Weaving Company). It is here that artisans who return from abroad with new technologies and weaving and dyeing methods put what they have learned to practice. Similarly, a large-scale silk-reeling factory was established in Fukuoka, where specialists from France taught large classes of artisans.

One noticeable consequence of these technological importations were the new colors of the Japanese garment. From the 1850s to the 1890s, printers in Europe introduced chemical dyes that made vivid colors like methylene blue, malachite green, and congo red available on textiles. Among these, the most notable was the invention of the purple dye, which, prior to the 1850’s, were hugely expensive to produce, dull in silk rendering, and limited to members of the imperial court and samurai. Through the group of textile artisans from Nishijin, Japan started adopting these dyes, and developed applications of these dyes that suited the Japanese clothing. The kata-yūzen and the mosulin yūzen methods that first mixed the dyes with a rice paste, rendered the dye a beautiful, soft, and light pattern onto the worsted “muslins” of the kimonos that was especially pleasing to the local tastes. During this time, Japanese and European fashion industries engaged in an interesting and mutually-feedbacking dialogue regarding color that pushed both industries towards more color and vibrancy in the clothes. The ukiyo-e woodblock prints from Japan played a key role for European artists in projecting a more colorful portrayal of the Japanese than was accurate for the European audience, and conversely, Western technologies made this Western-projected perception of a Japanese fashion come true in Japan.

Along with these imported coloring technology, a new form of fabric--wool--entered the life cycle of the kimono. The first Japanese woolen mill went into production in 1878 as a response to increased import of the good for blankets and winter accessories for the kimono such as a variety of overcoats. With the silk or cotton garments, the only way of fending off the cold was adding as many layers of clothings as possible, but with the introduction of cotton, one or only a few layers were enough. The inconvenience of the silk and cotton kimonos thus rendered them less popular than the wool kimonos. Eventually, wool was used in the making of the kimono itself as well. The combination of the convenience that wool offered and the vibrancy that mosulin yūzen rendered the designs gave rise to what scholars call the wool boom. The change in the material of the kimono and its color scheme can both be traced back to the introduction of Western technology and aesthetics. They were subtle ways in which the West weaved itself into the Japanese garment.

Beyond the backend production of the material and dye, the West also changed the frontend design of the kimono. The new fabric and colors set the ground for an explosion of new patterns, which is generally categorized into two classes: the Nihonga designs and the Zuan-Zukuri designs. The former were made by the painters of the nihonga (traditional Japanese) class, and in the 1910s their work formalized into the taishō roman (romantic Taishō style), inspired by the traditional Rimpa artworks and added a bold, fantastic twist to the nature scenery favored in the traditional paintings. The Zuan-Zukuri class was a conglomeration of the designs done by the artists trained in the newly established art schools, where they were inspired by contemporary art movements such as art deco, art nouveau, cubism, Russian avant-garde constructivism, and so on. Japanese art nouveau emerged in the early 1910’s and took hold of the new season of kimono prints. In this design, the quintessential motifs of flowing water and blossoming flowers were preserved, but they took on the simplified, powerful, and vibrant that characterized the art nouveau movement. Art deco, the successor of art nouveau, took the former’s exuberance and luxury and dramatized it even further. In the Japanese adaptation, the chrysanthemums became brighter and bolder, the flowing waves became swirling whirlpools.

The style of the women’s kimono changed rather drastically in the early years of the Meiji Era. Now created with the new chemical dye, every aspect of the kimono became more vibrant--from the design of the outerwear to the red pongee silk lining on the inner kimono. Men’s kimono, similarly, went from being either plain or simple to pompous and explicit, and the most common motifs were graphic scenes from the wars. Hedonism and glamour characterized the new pattern designs of the kimono in the mid- and late Meiji Era, and like the sun that shines upon the golden cathedrals, the new kimono fashion defined a new aesthetic standard completely opposite from the austerity and reservations of the previous eras.

Furthermore, consumer patterns surrounding the kimono changed as well. Thanks to the new, economical methods of mass production, kimonos became an item that was consumed and discarded according to the latest trends. A new era of consumerism manifested in the kimono, where young, city-dwelling women especially, would wait for the department stores for the latest and most fashionable garments “In the old days, kimono followed the season… Now we have the season of serge and the season of flannel in the interstices,” the Coed World (Jogaku sekai) magazine observed. The kimon changed in other ways as well. The trailing, padded hemline of the formal Edo-style kimono was pulled up and folded into the obi, the sleeve lengths and opening size were standardized, and so on. Western influences not only changed the style and production of the kimono, but also the lifestyle and values surrounding the kimono. Ephemeral trends overtook the value of longevity as consumers chased new trends. In this way, Westernization creeped up on the kimono, first in the form of colors, material, and production methods, and then in the design and thus lifestyle surrounding the kimono. In this process, Western culture and ideals weaved itself into the Japanese identity.

IV. “I Say:” The Case of Interweavings

The 1883 construction of the Rokumeikan in Tokyo marked a new era of Western idolization in Japan. The social upper class, led by the Empress Haruko, followed the footsteps of the military and government men in adopting Western attire at formal appearances. For this class individuals, the Western perception of the Japanese was of utmost importance. “Frock coats and bowler hats for men, corseted waists and bustles for women were more than mere fashion--” Dalby wrote, “they proclaimed their wearer a new breed of Japanese, personæ fully equal of Europeans and Americans.” Scholars highlighted these moments in history as the moments during which the Japanese national identity was redefined. But this switch did not immediately trickle down to the rest of the social hierarchy. For most women, especially those who spent the majority of their time at home, the kimono remained their wardrobe staple. Even for the empress herself and the wives of the government officials, Western wear was only for official appearances. In the comfort of their own homes and company, Japanese women remained true to the kimono.

However, the kimono did not remain insulated from Western influence. In shape, print, and purpose, the kimono changed drastically during the Meiji era thanks to the infiltration of Western technologies and ideas both in the fashion industry and in the social fabric of the Japanese society--it became brighter, more vibrant, more practical, and each season of new designs was an ephemeral muse of fashion and consumerism. The this-or-that portrayal of the conflict between Japan and the West oversimplifies the situation, completely neglecting the dialogue that takes place between the two cultures. The opening of Japan to the West was not a dichotomy--a choice between the kimono or the Western gown. As this essay has demonstrated, the process was much more complicated. The gradual change in the kimono--more vibrant and colorful prints, shorter and more practical hemlines, different and more efficient materials--was a more prevalent and sweeping influence that the West imprinted upon Japan. The narrative of Western influence was not one of a black or white, rather, it was the interweavings of the two cultures that formed the colorful new fabric of modern Japan.

Figures

1. 1887: Imperial Japanese Army officers of the Kumamoto garrison, who resisted Saigō Takamori's siege.

2. 1877: Saigō Takamori (seated, in French uniform), surrounded by his officers, in traditional attire. News article in Le Monde illustré.

3. Empress Haruko in traditional court attire 4. Empress Haruko in Western attire, 1886

5. 1887 Imperial Garden Party, Published in the British weekly illustrated newspaper The Graphic on August 20, 1887 (Meiji 20).

6. 1660s: Women’s garment with small-sleeve openings (kosode) with design of fishing net and characters (‘uguisu’, warbler), probably 1660s, silk, metallic threads, silk embroidery, tied resist-dyeing (shibori).

7. 18th Century: Women’s garment with small-sleeve openings (kosode) with design of willow tree and Chinese characters (and detail character ‘hige’, whiskers), paste-resist dyeing and stencil dyeing with silk embroidery and couched gold threat on silk.

8. 1775: Woman’s garment with small-sleeve openings (kosode) with design of men pulling fishing boats through reeds, 1775-1800, paste-resist dyeing with silk embroidery and ink painting on silk.

9. 1930: Advertisement poster: Isezaki meisen kimono. The woman in the poster is MIzutani Yaeko (movie star).

10. And 11. Examples of the Rimpa-inspired taishō roman design. The bottom hemline of the robe shows a direct rendering of the roman painting style.

12., 13., And 14. 1910’s-1920’s: women's kimono of the art nouveau style.

15., 16. 1920’s: women’s kimono of the art deco style.

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