土屋ノブ子（栃木）

About this photo

The name under the photo reads "Tsuchiya Nobuko (Tochigi)." She turns her body slightly at an angle and faces the camera. Her kimono has rows of white, blurred-looking chevrons, with thin vertical lines running between them. Her obi also has a fine pattern. A portrait from Nihon Bijincho (Album of Japanese Beauties, 1908).

This kimono looks like kasuri. Kasuri is cloth in which the threads are partly dyed before weaving, by binding them or in other ways, and the pattern is woven with those threads. The technique is said to have begun in India and reached Japan from Southeast Asia by way of Ryukyu (now Okinawa). Around 1800, Inoue Den of the Kurume Domain worked out a way of weaving the blurred patterns.

From the Meiji era to the middle of the Showa era (the 1960s), kasuri was made in large quantities for everyday wear. Today Iyo-gasuri, Kurume-gasuri and Bingo-gasuri are called Japan's three great kasuri.

Glossary