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. 

Cherry Blossom Tales - by Lesley Downer

Cherry blossoms at Yoshino. Katsushika Hokusai 1833. 
Met Museum, Rogers Fund 1922. Public domain

うつせみの世にも似たるか花ざくらさくと見しまにかつちりにけり
Like the world
Hollow as a cicada’s empty shell -
Oh cherry blossoms -
The moment that we see you bloom
You have already fallen.
                                Anonymous. From the Kokinshu anthology of poetry (915-929 AD)

April is cherry blossom season in Japan, when people gather to eat, drink, sing, make music and sometimes dance under the spreading branches of the beautiful pink cherry trees. For well over a thousand years the cherry blossoms have inspired poetry, art and stories and have held a special place in the hearts of Japanese people. 

Cherry blossom viewing on the hill of Tenjin Shrine. Utagawa
Hiroshige 1833. From the series Famous Views of Osaka.
MFA Boston. Public domain.

The most famous place of all for cherry blossom, all the way back to the time of the artist Hokusai and long before, is Mount Yoshino in Central Japan. In fact Yoshino is emblematic of cherry blossom. In poetry the word ‘Yoshino’ evokes cherry blossom and the word ‘hana’ (flowers, cherry blossom) evokes Mount Yoshino. 

Most cherry trees bear their blossom on leafless branches. First come single pink blossoms, then white blossoms, then double blossoms. The blooms last only a few days before they fall.

The Pathos of Things
The cherry blossoms are said to be like clouds as they bloom all at once and hang above the trees as if shrouding them in mist. They last just a few days before withering and falling, raining white petals all across Japan. The falling petals are often compared to snow. Their transience is what is treasured, symbolising the poignant evanescence of existence - the impermanence of all things, mono no aware, ‘the pathos of things’, the poignancy at the root of all existence, the fragility of life, beauty and love.

Cherry blossoms symbolize birth and death, beauty and violence. They are part of Shinto, part of the Japanese worship of nature, but historically they also signified the short but dramatic life of the samurai. The youthful kamikaze pilots were celebrated as being like cherry blossom, with its vivid beauty and brief existence.

So on the one hand they’re heralds of spring, of nature’s revival after the cold winter. They represent the beauty of nature, renewal of life, first love. But on the other the brevity of their existence gives them has a melancholy quality, a painful beauty.

Portrait of the Emperor Saga, Imperial
Collection, Tokyo, Japan. Public domain.

Gods inside the Cherry Trees
According to the eight century chronicle Nihon Shoki, there were cherry blossom festivals as early as the third century AD. The blossoming of the cherry trees marked the beginning of the planting season. Through the timing of the blossoming seers could divine whether the harvest would be good that year or whether the gods within the cherry trees needed to be propitiated. Worshippers made offerings of food and drink, then ate the food and drank the sake and thus the custom of eating and drinking under the cherry trees began.

In the Heian period, around the ninth century, Emperor Saga was so moved by the beauty of a particular cherry tree at Jishu Shrine (now within the Kiyomizu Temple complex in Kyoto) that he decided to hold a cherry blossom viewing party. There was eating, drinking, dancing, singing and poetry writing. Thereafter he held regular parties with sake and feasting under the blossoming boughs of the cherry trees in the Imperial Palace. 

Ki no Tomonori, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 
1840, William Sturgis Bigelow 
Collection, MFA Boston. Public domain.

People would write poems celebrating the flowers, like life itself, luminous and beautiful but fleeting and ephemeral, such as this waka (31 syllable poem) by Ki no Tomonori (850-904 AD), in the Kokinshu and also in Hyakunin Isshu (A Hundred Poems by A Hundred Poets), Japan’s most all time popular collection of poetry:

久方の光のどけき春の日にしづ心なく花のちるらむ
In these spring days
When tranquil light encompasses
The four directions,
Why do the blossoms scatter
With such uneasy hearts?

Cherry blossom features large in the 11th century Tale of Genji. The eighth chapter, entitled Hana no En (The Cherry Blossom Party) begins with a cherry blossom celebration with poetry, singing, drinking, eating and dancing. The party goes on well into the night. Afterwards the beautiful Prince Genji hears a lady singing a snatch of a famous poem. He catches her by the sleeve in his casual way and draws her gently inside, ‘closing the door behind them.’ Fortunately for Genji #metoo was still far in the future. 

Genji, Hana no En. Utagawa Kunisada 1857. 
From Lady Murasaki's Genji cards. 
MFA Boston. Public Domain.

The Biggest Tea Party of All Time
Up till now it was the imperial court and the samurai who enjoyed cherry blossom viewing. But then came the great warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He brought about the unification of Japan, then ushered in a glorious golden age of the arts. He particularly loved the tea ceremony. He twice invited the entire population of Kyoto to a huge tea ceremony and cherry blossom viewing. The first was in 1594 when he invited 5000 people for a huge party at Mount Yoshino.

For the second he invited 1300 guests. First he had Daigo-ji Temple in Kyoto renovated and had 700 cherry trees of different varieties brought in and planted along the approach and grounds.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's cherry blossom viewing parade,
Daigo-ji, Fushima-ku, Kyoto Pref., Japan. 12 April 2009.
By Motokoka. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The party began with a huge procession. Dancers led the way to the doors of the huge main gate. Then came Hideyoshi’s samurai followed by yamabushi mountain ascetics and feudal lords. Hideyoshi, beaming joyously, decked out in colourful robes emblazoned with gold, was carried aloft on the shoulders of white-clad bearers. His son Hideyori followed together with his wife Nene and his concubines, including the famous beauty Lady Yodo (also known as Lady Cha-cha), the mother of the heir.

The party kept stopping for entertainment and the ascent took hours. The women changed outfits multiple times and many teahouses had been set up to cater to the 1,300 guests. Finally the entourage reached the great hall of the temple and the festivities began.

How Many Many Things They Bring to Mind

Under the Tokugawa shoguns the cultural centre shifted to Edo (now Tokyo). Successive shoguns planted cherry trees around the city. 

The eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684-1781), was a particular enthusiast of the cherry blossom and wanted to make cherry blossom viewing accessible to ordinary folk as well as to courtiers and samurai. He had cherry trees planted along the banks of the River Sumida, across the hills of Goten'yama in Shinagawa and along the banks of the River Tama, to provide places where impoverished commoners could relax and enjoy themselves.

Blossoms on the Tama River Embankment.
Utagawa Hiroshige 1856. MFA Boston.
Gift of Anna Ferris. Public Domain.

Meanwhile the merchants grew wealthier and wealthier. The shogunate passed sumptuary laws to prevent them from spending their wealth on ostentatious luxury. So they spent it in red-light districts, on geisha, and on cherry blossom parties in public parks. They modelled their parties on the courtly cherry blossom parties of the Heian period when the Tale of Genji was written but of course there was considerably less courtly entertainment and considerably more drink and rowdiness.

The poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) wrote many haiku celebrating the cherry blossom and drawing on their symbolism. He wrote one melancholy nostalgic haiku when he had gone back to his old home in Iga Ueno. The cherry blossoms there reminded him of a dear friend who had died twenty years earlier, cut off in his youth:

さまざまの事おもひ出す櫻かな
How many many things
They bring to mind -
The cherry blossoms! 

All pictures in the public domain.

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. She also appears on Netflix's Age of Samurai! For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

Life begins at 60: Hokusai at the British Museum by Lesley Downer

In pre-modern Japan the belief was that we start a whole new lifecycle at the age of 60. The Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum focuses on the celebrated artist’s work after this seminal age. Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) was in his early seventies when he created his iconic Great Wave and he looked forward to making more and more progress as he got older.

The Great Wave at Kanagawa by Hokusai 

He wrote, ‘Until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. ... When I reach 80 years I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art and at 110 every dot and every stroke will be as though alive.’

The exhibition begins with a few pictures he did as a mere youngster, before the age of sixty, which are of course spectacular. One of these brilliantly-brushed works depicts a pop-eyed dragon with long whiskers like a gargantuan shrimp, bursting through clouds clutching a koto - a Japanese zither - in its long curved claws.

Dragon by Hokusai 1798

In the 1820s, when Hokusai was in his sixties, he was commissioned to create some prints by the Dutch East India Company, the only westerners allowed in Japan at the time. This brought him into contact with western art with its intriguing use of perspective. Traditionally in Chinese and Japanese art distant objects like mountains were painted at the top of the picture. Hokusai began to play with perspective in his own work, making distant objects smaller, depicting Fuji seen through the curve of the Great Wave, for example, or rather humorously through a barrelmaker’s hoop. Depicting the mighty mountain as a small cone is the running gag of his Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji, of which The Great Wave is one.

The Dutch also brought over the fabulous new paint colour, Prussian blue, which Hokusai used to dramatic effect in the Great Wave.

Fisherman rinsing rice for his morning meal -
 from Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji

These Hokusai prints are the very first to spring from the meeting of eastern and western traditions. The influence soon began to flow the other way as well. Ten years after Hokusai’s death, in 1859, Japan opened to the west. The British Museum bought its first Hokusai in 1860. In 1871 Claude Monet was on his first trip to Holland, in a shop in Amsterdam, haggling over a piece of Delft porcelain. ‘Suddenly I saw a dish filled with images below on a shelf,’ he wrote. ‘Japanese woodblocks!’ The merchant, unaware of their value, threw them in as a job lot with the jar. By the end of his life Monet had collected 231 woodblock prints and they much influenced his work. Many western artists were hugely influenced by Japanese art - the emphasis on line, on design, the extraordinary perspectives - including Van Gogh who in 1888 wrote, ‘All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art.’ To his brother Theo he wrote of the Great Wave, ‘These waves are claws, the boat is caught in them, you can feel it.’

Debussy's La Mer

Hokusai’s prints are art for the people. The Great Wave cost the same as a couple of bowls of noodles. While the rich beautified their alcoves with incredibly expensive hanging scrolls, Hokusai made long narrow woodblock prints which were much cheaper, so ordinary folk could have a beautiful image in their alcove too.

The focus of the British Museum exhibition is the Great Wave but there’s much more than that, fabulous prints displaying Hokusai’s crisp, sharp brush strokes which, having studied Japanese ink painting myself, I am in awe of. There are many examples of his incredible imagination and sense of humour, his quirky way of looking at the world, wonderful scenes of everyday life - not the life of samurai but of the humble workers who surrounded Hokusai and were a part of his world.

In his later years Hokusai lived with his daughter Oi who was a fine artist in her own right. She may well have designed some of the prints that are signed with Hokusai’s name. Obviously they’d go for far more if they were signed with the master’s name, not hers. There are works signed by her in the exhibition, portraying the courtesans of the pleasure quarters, for example, through a woman’s eyes.

Dragon rising above Mount Fuji
day of the dragon 1849

In the end Hokusai didn’t live quite as long as he’d hoped. When he died at the age of 89, he left a death poem:

‘Maybe I’ll unwind
by roaming the summer fields
as a will o’ the wisp.’

His last picture was of a dragon soaring above Mount Fuji, as his spirit soared off into eternity.

Lesley Downer's latest novel, The Shogun's Queen, is set in Hokusai's Japan and comes out in paperback on July 27th. For more see her website, http://www.lesleydowner.com/.