Kimono fashion ~ by Lesley Downer

Kosode with autumn flowers
by Ogata Kōrin, 18th century
(Tokyo National Museum)

‘First the courtesan Kaoru commissioned the renowned artist Kano Yukinobu to paint a picture of flaming autumn on plain white satin. Eight court nobles were next asked to inscribe vignettes in verse, in black decorative calligraphy, on this gorgeous design. The result was a picture of breath-taking beauty, admirably suitable for a hanging scroll. But Kaoru had no idea of putting it to such trifling use. She had it made into a robe for herself.’

The Life of an Amorous Man, Ihara Saikaku, 1682

The trendsetters of old Japan were the fabulously wealthy and celebrated courtesans of the pleasure quarters, as in the story above, by the famous writer and teller of naughty tales, Ihara Saikaku.

The key word is ‘trifling’ - ‘trifling use’. Why waste a beautiful painting by hanging it on a wall when you could have it made into a kimono? Then you could wear it and reveal how the painted image would change as you draped it on your body and, even more spectacularly, how it would flow as you moved, transforming it from a two dimensional object to a three dimensional work of art!

'Whose sleeves?'

Tagasode, 16th - 17th century (Met Museum)

There’s a genre of painting in Japan called Tagasode - 'Whose Sleeves?' Whose indeed? There are no people in these pictures, no beautiful women, just kimonos, draped seductively over a lacquered clothing frame. In old Japan a picture like this was considered provocative, even erotic. Just as a person’s fragrance and belongings can strongly evoke them, so it’s an invitation to speculate on the wearer. How gorgeous must the lady be who wraps herself up in one of these! In terms of allure clothing counts for as much as or more than the body wrapped up inside.

Moronobu Hishikawa (1618-1694) (Met Museum)

In woodblock prints the faces and figures of the courtesans, dancing girls and kabuki actors tend to be rather simply delineated, a hint rather than a studious portrait, not much differentiated. The focus is on the kimonos, rather, which are ravishing and distinctive. In this print by Moronobu each kimono is different.

Kimonos as art
Kimonos are always the same shape. What makes them different is not the cut or the style, which never change, but the painted design. In Japan the kimono is very far from just a garment. It is an art form and the great kimono designers are revered as artists. Museums worldwide show exhibitions of kimonos, both historical and contemporary. And in the women’s palace of the shogun’s castle in Edo (now Tokyo) and in daimyo’s castles and in wealthy merchants’ homes, sumptuous kimonos were hung on lacquered racks as a form of interior decoration.

Kosode moyo hinagata bon. Book
of painted kosode designs, second half
17th century (Met Museum)

In fact the silk kosode (the basic kimono) was the primary canvas for artistic expression in the 17th and 18th centuries in Japan. Kosode were often works of art on a par with paintings.

As in the story above, some designs feature written characters or whole poems used as decoration. Literature, the visual arts and traditional motifs and themes such as the ‘One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets’ happily combine with textiles to make a unified work of art. The artist incorporates their reaction to the feeling of the poem in their design, sometimes including a line or phrase in the pattern.

In the Edo period (1603-1868) kimono designers were as high in status, if not higher, than woodblock artists. Many artists, beginning with Moronobu, created kimono patterns. The legendary woodblock print artist Katsushika Hokusai, creator of The Great Wave and much else, also made designs for kimono fabric. He did small repeat patterns which became popular in the late Edo era when sumptuary laws restricting elaborate dress were increasingly enforced.

Kimono pattern books (Hinagata-bon)
Shops turned out kimono pattern books for every season promoting the latest fashions. A clerk would take a selection of books to a daimyo’s castle or a wealthy merchant’s home so that the lady of the house or an assistant could choose suitable designs. Less wealthy clients could go to the shop and study the pattern books there. Every year you would need to order new kimonos so as to keep up with the fashion.

 

Pattern book (hinagata-bon)
Enoki Hironobu 1751 (Met Museum)

The pattern books show designs for younger women, older women, young men, courtesans - but that doesn’t mean that the purchaser of the books would commission such designs, just as you wouldn’t actually expect to wear the clothes you see on the catwalk at Fashion Week. The pattern books were more like fashion magazines, like Vogue. People who couldn’t afford or wouldn’t want to wear such extravagantly glamorous clothes could still enjoy thumbing through the pages.

If you decided to commission a kimono, first you would choose your pattern from the pattern books. The tailor would record details of your requirements then make full size draft drawings with specifications to send to the dyers or embroiderers for the next stage of the production process. Once the decoration was finished the garment would be complete. 

Kosode, Edo period, 18th century, design of autumn
grasses and brushwood fences on  light green
chirimen crepe (Tokyo National Museum)

Edo period sumptuary laws decreed what sort of fabrics and designs you could and couldn’t wear. Certain fabrics and designs were reserved for the ladies of the imperial court or of the women’s palace at Edo Castle or for extremely high-ranking daimyos’ ladies. Conversely townswomen in particular were prohibited from wearing luxurious fabrics. 

As a result both they and their tailors became expert at, for example, designing a very plain unostentatious jacket with an incredibly expensive, over the top lining. It was the height of chic to dress very conservatively, allowing just a flash of the glorious lining to be seen.

The courtesans were famously flashy dressers. Yet what men found the most provocative was not the layers and layers of brilliantly coloured and heavily embroidered fabric - it was the tiny bare foot peeking out from under the voluptuous skirts, the only hint of the real woman gift-wrapped inside it all.

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and an inveterate traveller. She is the author of many books on Japan, including The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death, out now in paperback. For more see  http://www.lesleydowner.com/.

Pictures courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Tokyo National Museum - by way of Wikimedia Commons. 

Aliens Invade! - by Lesley Downer

Black Ship - a Japanese artist imagines

On July 14th 1853, 166 years ago today, an event occurred that completely changed Japan and the world. I’ll start by winding the clock back a few days.

First Contact
On July 8th 1853, fishermen casting their nets at the mouth of Edo Bay saw an unimaginable sight. It was a windless day and their boats were becalmed, yet surging towards them were four monster ships, bigger than any they’d ever seen. ‘As large as mountains’, said a fisherman later, moving ‘as swiftly as birds,’ and two ‘afire’ with smoke pouring out of them like a dragon’s breath. Worst of all, they were heading for the capital, Edo. They dropped anchor at the mouth of the bay and turned their cannons on the little town of Uraga there.

Panicking, the fishermen hauled their nets in and rowed for shore to send a warning to Edo.

Not Martians - Americans! 
The government officials knew exactly what this was - an alien invasion, not Martians but Americans. It was Commodore Matthew Perry and his Black Ships.

Perry stayed hidden but that didn't prevent
artists from imagining what he looked like.
Honolulu Museum of Art

For more than 200 years, since 1639, Japan had been closed to the western world, except for twenty Dutch merchants who lived on Dejima island off Nagasaki. Every year a Dutch ship came with goods to trade, enabling the Japanese to keep abreast of developments outside and to buy western technology and books. By remaining closed they’d managed to stave off colonisation. But they were well aware of the Opium War of 1839 to 1842 and of British incursions into China. They knew the wolf was at the door. In fact the King of Holland, their ally, had written to the shogun warning that an American fleet was on its way.

On the other side of the world, the Crimean War was brewing. It broke out that same month, tying up the three great colonising powers - Britain, France and Russia - and leaving the way open for the fledgling United States of America.

Whaling
Whaling was the spark that ignited the flame. In 1851 Hermann Melville wrote in Moby Dick, ‘If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale ship alone to whom the credit will be due, for already she is on the threshold.’

In America people lit their homes with whale oil lamps. Baleen whale bones were to stiffen crinolines and industrial machinery was lubricated with whale oil. For decades whaling ships from New England had plied the rich waters around Hokkaido but could not put in even for supplies; and shipwrecked sailors who fell into Japanese hands were treated harshly and usually ended up in prison.

In November 1851 President Millard Fillmore instructed Commodore Matthew Perry to deliver a letter to the Japanese Emperor demanding that American whalers and other vessels be allowed access to one or two ports of call to take on coal and water and that castaways be treated humanely. Initially at least the Americans did not insist on a trade treaty, just these two small specific demands.

Confrontation 
The American squadron, two steamships and two sloops with 61 guns and 967 men, entered Edo Bay at nearly 9 knots, leaving the shogunal navy scrambling in their wake and fishermen, as the journalist Bayard Taylor, looking down from his perch on the upper deck, wrote, fleeing for shore ‘like wild birds at a sudden intruder’.

Guard boats swarmed out to intercept the ships, rowed by ‘tall athletic men naked save for a cloth around the loins.’ Officials on board held up a huge sign reading, ‘Depart immediately and dare not anchor’ in French.

There were also artists on board, busily sketching. They knew there was going to be a huge demand for pictures of the Black Ships.

The intruders drove the guard boats away with pikes.

Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) 

Met Museum

Perry kept out of sight in his cabin. He was determined only to speak to a man of the highest rank, equal to his own. ‘I was well aware that the more exclusive I should make myself and the more exacting I might be, the more respect these people of forms and ceremonies would be disposed to award me,’ he later wrote.

Nevertheless the Americans were never fully aware of exactly what was going on.

Eventually Nakajima Saburonosuke was allowed on board. Somehow the Americans had the impression that he was the vice governor of Uraga. In fact he was a mere police magistrate.

Bayard Taylor described his black cloak and shorter undergarment, the two swords in his waistband, his sandals and white toed tabi socks, and his red lacquered helmet shaped like an inverted basin.

With the translation going from English into Dutch, then into Japanese, and back again, using two not particularly skilful interpreters, Lieutenant Franklin Buchanan told Nakajima that the Americans had a letter they had to deliver to the Emperor. This made the Japanese chortle to themselves. The Emperor was an impoverished Pope-like figure who played no part in government affairs. The Americans added that if they were refused they would go ashore ‘with sufficient troops’ and deliver it themselves - a chilling threat indeed.

Meanwhile the second police magistrate, Kayama Eizaemon, had counted seventy cannons on the ships. The shogunate had 100 cannons dotted around Edo Bay but only 11 of comparable calibre. The Japanese were completely outgunned.

Panic
By evening panic was growing. The government declared a state of emergency. The daimyo warlords in charge of the defence of Edo Bay rushed off to rally their troops. People living near the coast fled inland, carrying all the possessions they could on their backs or in carts.

Kayama Eizaemon
Thereafter Kayama Eizaemon, the second police magistrate, took over as chief go between. His elaborate silk garments embroidered with gold and silver peacock feathers presented a colourful spectacle and the Americans were impressed with his gentlemanly deportment. Kayama tried using delaying tactics but the Americans issued an ultimatum, giving him three days to come up with an answer before they went ashore themselves.

The problem was that Perry insisted that only men of the highest rank should receive the letter, but no high ranking man wanted to touch it.

Finally the government found a way round it. The small town of Uraga had two governors - Toda Izu and Ido Iwami. In short order they were declared princes of Izu and daimyo of Sagami, making them of high enough rank to deal with Perry and receive the letter. Toda, now ‘prince of Izu’, was most amused at his sudden promotion, like being promoted overnight from Mayor of Margate to Earl of Essex.

Delivery of the President's letter.
Lithograph, J Sinclair, Philadelphia,
Courtesy of the Library of Congress

The Americans were satisfied and they set the date and the place for the delivery of the letter.

Kayama explores the ship

To celebrate, the Americans took Kayama and the interpreters on a tour of the ship. The Japanese marvelled at the size and complexity of ship’s engines and its fearsome Paixhans gun, saw their first photographs and tasted whisky and brandy. The Americans assumed the Japanese didn’t know the world was round and showed them a globe, expecting them to be bemused. Kayama coolly pointed out New York and Washington and asked about railroad tunnels, the Panama railway which was under construction at the time and if ship’s engines were akin to those used in railroad engines. The Americans were, they wrote, surprised by the Japanese officials’ grasp of the ‘general principles of science and of the facts of the geography of the world.’

July 14th - delivering the letter
Perry, afraid of treachery, insisted on meeting at Kurihama where they could bring the American ships close enough to shore to bring the beach within range of their guns.

The Americans were kept awake by the banging as carpenters worked through the night to build the reception halls.

The next morning they saw the results of their labours. There were two pavilions decorated with flags and banners and fifty Japanese guard boats, each decorated with a red flag. More than 5000 samurai gathered and there were women peeking from behind screens, and local villagers too had gathered around. The Japanese officials wore brocaded silk overgarments trimmed with yellow velvet and embroidered with gold thread. It was all so splendid that ‘it made me think that had come to be a spectator at some joust or tourney,’ wrote a young American clerk called J W Spalding.

Pomp and circumstance
At 10 o’clock 250 Americans left the ships to a thunderous gun roll of 13 guns. And finally Perry appeared. He stepped into a white barge and went ashore to a roll of drums, flanked by two huge black stewards, ‘two of the best looking fellows of their colour that the squadron could furnish’. Behind hum came two cabin boys carrying rosewood boxes wrapped in scarlet cloth holding the letters. While the band played ‘Hail Columbia’ the procession followed Kayama and the interpreters up the hill to the reception hall.

The Japanese had even managed to procure an armchair for Perry.

Perry and his armchair
Library of Congress, public domain

Toda was there to receive the letters - one from President Fillmore pledging friendship and requesting the opening of relations, the other Perry’s instructions to open negotiations on a treaty of amity between the two nations. Perry said he would return next April or May with more ships, ‘as these are only a portion of the squadron.’ It was a straightforward threat.

The Americans collected shells and stones from the beach as souvenirs and compared swords with the Japanese soldiers. And finally they marched back to their ships to the strains of ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’.

Opening the door
Perry had opened the door. He returned the following year with not four but nine ships and forced the Japanese to sign a treaty opening the ports. But that was just the beginning. Other nations rapidly arrived demanding similar concessions - and more and more concessions followed.

What the newcomers didn’t realise was that their arrival had cast Japan into upheaval. The result was a breakdown of order in Japan and the overthrow of the shogunate. In 1868, a mere fifteen years after Perry arrived, the teenage Emperor Meiji became the figurehead of a new government and modern Japan was born. Perry’s initial incursion had entirely changed the course of history.

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale of love and death in nineteenth century Japan, begins at the moment when Black Ships are sighted off the coast and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Dancing into the Modern Age: 150th Anniversary of the Meiji Restoration - by Lesley Downer

November 1868: Emperor Meiji enters Edo in his phoenix palanquin

On November 26th 1868, a hundred and fifty years ago this month, a vast procession three and a half thousand strong filed through the massive gates of Edo Castle, with musicians stepping out in front. Right at the centre, born on the shoulders of forty or fifty close packed bearers, was the imperial palanquin, topped with a golden phoenix, carrying the sixteen year old Emperor Mutsuhito, whom we now know as Emperor Meiji. 

Emperor Meiji on his way to Edo

He had been wending his way across the country from his ancestral home in Kyoto for twenty days. Ten thousand people lined the streets to watch him pass. Shortly afterwards Edo was renamed Tō-kyō, ‘Eastern Capital’, and Edo Castle became the Imperial Palace. The event was dubbed the Meiji Restoration. A whole new era had begun. 

Shoguns had held power in Japan for many centuries. During those years the emperors had been like popes, spending their lives sequestered in the imperial palace in Kyoto and never leaving. For 250 years the country enjoyed uninterrupted peace. Japanese culture flourished - the world we see depicted in woodblock prints and on the stage of the kabuki theatre, the world of Basho’s haiku, Zen and much else. 

During most of those years Japan was closed to the west. The only westerners were 20 Dutch merchants who were allowed to live on a small island off Nagasaki. A Dutch ship came once a year and kept the Japanese up to speed with western science and developments. Thus the Japanese knew a fair bit about the west but the west knew very little about Japan. 

The rickshaw, invented in Japan in 1869

Then, in a single day - July 8th 1853 - everything changed. Fishermen in their boats at the mouth of Edo Bay saw four monstrous ships surging towards them, spouting steam. ‘As large as mountains,’ the fishermen reported, ‘moving as fast as birds.’ It was as if aliens had landed. But it was not Martians. It was Americans. It was Commodore Matthew Perry and his famous Black Ships. 

The fifteen years of turmoil that followed ended with the shogun being overthrown. The fifteenth and last shogun retired to his family lands and the teenage Emperor was borne in splendour into Edo, now Tokyo. And straight away things started to change. 

Ginza Bricktown 1874

Under the shoguns Edo had been an eastern Venice, lined with canals, with willow trees swaying along the banks. People went around by water, on foot, by palanquin or on horseback. There were no wheels for transporting people, only for goods. Wheels were quick to arrive. The rickshaw was invented almost instantaneously - in 1869. Soon rickshaws were everywhere, clattering through the streets, with the drivers shouting and threatening to mow people down if they didn’t leap out of the way fast enough. 

Tokyo mushroomed much as China is mushrooming now. New buildings shot up in the western mode, of brick and stone, not wood. One of the first was the Mitsui House, a splendid wedding cake-like confection, owned by the wealthy shopkeeping and money exchanging Mitsui family, soon to found a business and banking empire.

Then in April 1872 an area called the Ginza, full of furniture shops and second hand shops, mysteriously burnt down. No one was hurt, generating the suspicion that the fire had been set deliberately. The area was rebuilt entirely in sparkling new brick buildings and called Ginza Bricktown. The street was lined with all sorts of wonderful shops - a brand new newspaper office, a post office and a beef restaurant where people could dine on an exciting new dish - beef. In 1874 the Ginza was lit with Japan’s first gas lamps. 

First train at Shimbashi station by Shōsai Ikkei, circa 1870 -
donated to Wiki Commons by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Also in 1872 the first train line opened linking Tokyo and Yokohama, built under the direction of the Englishman Edmund Morell. He had succumbed to fever and died at the age of 30 the year before the railway opened and is buried in the Foreigners’ Cemetery in Yokohama. The emperor was there in all his regalia to open it. He was 20 by now. He soon set an example by changing to western clothing (a military uniform with lots of medals) for official duties. He also made the revolutionary announcement, ‘I shall eat beef.’ 

The empress followed suit. In 1873 she announced she was going to give up teeth blackening which was quite as shocking as if Meghan had suddenly announced she was going to blacken her teeth. Up till then adult women had always painted their teeth with lacquer to make them a lovely shiny black.

View of Benten Shrine: The Emperor and Empress cherry blossom viewing with their attendants
by Utagawa Hiroshige III 1881 - donated to Wiki Commons by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the cities at least everyone who could afford it was madly experimenting. Men rushed to the new-fangled barber shops - the first opened in 1869 - to have their oiled samurai topknots cut off and their hair cut in the latest style, the jangiri style, the cropped cut. People who had grown up wearing topknots and swords tried the bizarre new western fashions - trousers and Sherlock Holmes capes and incredibly uncomfortable leather boots.

Women were more conservative in their dress choices. Geisha being trendsetters were the first to try western clothes - bustles and bonnets. The very first person to wear high heeled shoes was a Nagasaki geisha in the 1880s.

Then in 1883 the Rokumeikan - the Hall of the Baying Stag - opened in central Tokyo right opposite the Imperial Palace. It was a rather flashy Italianate mansion of white painted brick with colonnaded verandas, set in landscaped gardens. There Japanese high society - gentlemen in frock coats, ladies in bustles, bows, corset and bonnets - dined on French food cooked by a French chef, using knives and forks, played billiards, had charity bazaars, sang western songs and played western musical instruments.

Dancing into the future - at the Hall of the Baying Stag

There were also famous balls. The idea was that gentlemen should appear with their wives on their arms as western people did. But unless you were an ex-geisha as quite a few of the ladies were, most upper class Japanese women were not accustomed to going out with their husbands, so a lot of the ladies at the Rokumeikan were actually the geisha of the gentleman in question, not the wife.

From Aguranabe, 'Sitting round the beef pot'
by Kanagaki Robun

All this modernising was a lot of fun but it also had a serious purpose - to persuade the western powers that the Japanese were every bit as civilised as them so that they would repeal the hated unequal treaties, by which the Japanese had to pay inflated export duties and the exchange rate was rigged in the westerners’ favour and many other humiliating clauses besides.

But despite all the dancing and modern clothes, the treaties were not repealed until 1895, after Japan defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War. As a Japanese diplomat said wearily a decade later, after Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War: ‘My people had been sending artistic treasures to Europe for some time, and had been regarded as barbarians. But as soon as we showed ourselves able to shoot down Russians with quick firing guns, we were acclaimed as a highly civilised race.’

In case anyone might like to hear more, I’m giving a couple of lectures to mark the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration - at the Ashmolean in Oxford on Friday November 23rd from 1 to 2 and at the British Library on Tuesday November 27th at 7.15. 

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic tale very much based on a true story and set in Japan at the time of the turmoil preceding the Meiji Restoration- out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons or private collection.