Against my Japanese craftsmen counterparts, as an Australian visiting Japan I feel like a bull in a fine China shop. They are meticulous and take pride in their work that surpasses anything I have seen elsewhere, and that includes my beloved Italians, who I find creative, inspirational and erudite in the realm of fabrics and fabrication. My tour to Japan was to document artisans, open up supplies to Japanese Yuzen silk, and to have a ski at the end. I did all things successfully.
I don’t talk much about my private life, but it was a series of interludes with my girlfriend at the time. She had wanted out in September, I believe they call it a discard. We tried again, we argued again, she said she wasn’t stopping me living my life, we took time off again and during that period I began to think maybe she was right. I must not stop living my life. In that space I chose my path: Japan, artisans, food, culture, immersion. I booked it. I have no regrets looking back. She was right, you have to follow your path, even if it diverges. Such is life. It hurts, but in many ways it frees you up.
We had again fought the night before our respective departures. I got on my flight with a heavy heart but as I flew in over Tokyo and looked at the mountains below I began to feel a little lighter, not a lot, but forward momentum and meaning and purpose usually help soothe things to an extent.
I spent a few days in Tokyo in a pensive state and in my hotel room I looked at all my AI responses to finding artisans in Kyoto. I jumped on a bullet train and after unloading at the Hilton, a very architecturally beautiful hotel, I went and rented a bicycle. My first stop was to a fabric workshop named Marumasu Nishimuraya where I sat in a class doing stencils and graduated dyes and paints onto base cloth (they had run out of silk) to see how it was done. A great experience, and Saskia, a Dutch lady, spoke perfect English and she was the first person I documented in the arts and crafts there.
I followed on by riding around Kyoto looking for silk producers but I realised it would require more work. Saskia had said to try the Teramachi mall to begin with, a shop called Suzaku, she said, specialised in great vintage kimonos. It had nothing I was looking for, the select beautiful stuff I was chasing in the world of yuzen, it wasn’t there, specifically furisode and homongi, the first being coming-of-age kimonos, the second being bridal.
Kyoto, if you don’t already know, was founded by Emperor Kanmu in 794, a strict grid-like city fashioned off the greatest said city of the day, Chang’an, the capital at the time of Tang China. And through it runs the Duck River, and it is skirted by mountains. It’s overrun by tourists all year long but February seemed okay if you stayed away from the traps like the Golden Pavilion or the Bamboo Forest. Look, I did most of them, and the Golden Pavilion at sunset, having ridden my e-bike to the outskirts of Kyoto, was a splendid experience. I can see myself riding along the river bank, the water gently moving over intermittent cascades and patches of reeds stretching out to the centre of the river, clouds hanging in the sky and the mountains in the far distance with no snow on them.
My translator Joni arrived on bullet train from Tokyo. He had what I assumed was a gravelly Japanese voice but upon exiting the rented Toyota he presented as a Sephardi Jew, to my surprise, and had a story about the war and the family arriving in Tokyo and his being sent off to boarding school in India with a dog and a maid. A very interesting character to say the least.
Our first stop together was Matsuoka, who were masters in Shibori and had a kimono display as well as all the Yuzen silks one would ever want, but it was my first time experiencing the true price of these gems. They were starting at 8k AUD and working their way up from there. I pulled the pin on one, it’s due to be paid for in April.
The day before I had visited Chiso, a famed Kyoto silk company. They had a stunning exhibition on their 2nd floor of historic Chiso kimonos. The company had been running continuously since 1555, which blew me away since I had thought the old Italian wool companies like Piacenza and Vitale Barberis Canonico were the oldest around. No such thing. These companies, including Hosoo that I visited with Joni, a 12th generation family business, were proper institutions. And I was privileged to get a walk-through on both, one by Google Translate, the other with Joni. Joni was some strange part of Judaism so when we stopped for lunch he had to order very specific food. He didn’t eat meat for one, but there were other criteria to be met.
With Chiso I experienced a vibrancy of silk and that is where I came to see these 25k AUD kimonos, the ones of the highest grade, the silk I was chasing, the stunning details, the hand embroidery, the kinsai gold leaf details. They were not going to let me into their workroom on the 6th floor but it wasn’t a big deal as a couple of days later I was in Nobu’s workroom, which I will mention later, and he had previously been one of Chiso’s master kimono silk makers. Just as a side note here, and it needs mentioning, although Chiso makes all their products in house, the Japanese silk industry does not run in the main like Chiso, and even with Chiso I never found out whether they wove their own tanmono rolls. The silk textiles industry in the main is made up of tanmono weavers (the base cloth on 40cm rolls x 17 metres), the dye houses, the printers, the weavers, the embroiderers and the makers. And within each of those different parts there are specialists involved. In the case of Tatsamura, mentioned next, they show on one diagram how there are up to 50 different companies and people involved in any given finished product from silk art to obe.
We managed to secure an appointment later in the afternoon with Amane Tatsamura, one of Japan’s most revered hand weavers of silk, and there my eyes really opened up because, having not been able to see the tanmono being woven, my next best alternative was seeing it being hand-woven in ancient jacquard looms made of timber that clanked away in an otherwise quiet part of town, towards the Golden Pavilion, I believe in the Nishijin District. Hmm, so many facts to get right.
Joni translated but shooshed me on many occasions. I still hadn’t learned how the Japanese roll, the patience, the clarity, the grace about these people. It was amazing and such a contrast to my wanting to get to the bottom of it ASAP so I could report back to my customers. There were canvases hand done for companies like a logistics company whose logo was a phoenix, but they were commissioned by museums, governments and institutions all around the world for their unique hand-woven creations. At the very end they showed me a little boutique that ran off their education room where I found silks on the roll that were the designs of Tatsamura, woven locally in Kyoto. I bought some and upon returning we placed some of them as bow ties on the website. One customer was enthralled, a local Sydney man, he bothered to turn up and knock on the door asking if we had any other colourways, but the selection was limited and we had no intention of making more. That’s part of our charm with those one-offs we put on the website, once they are gone they are gone.
At each turn we took videos, the silk art, the explanations of each work, the looms, the obe being woven, the explanation that Japanese textiles traders had travelled to France and had brought back the technology then of the jacquard weaving machines. Again, and not to put myself down, but when you see the level of intricacy involved, the amount of time and patience that goes into their work, the level of detail and how many hands were involved in the process, it makes what I do seem so pedestrian. Nonetheless, they were impressed with what I did and there was a mutual respect all around, no matter who we bumped into. The same could be said of Hosoo, whose lineage alone was so impressive, but their core difference was that they had reworked obe looms to make interior and fashion textiles and both their store and their immersive video experience upstairs were a pleasure to see, from beautiful overcoats to cushions and bedspreads, it was exceptional stuff. Only the construction was too thick for us to make bow ties so instead we offered to help them find fabric stores in Australia and have since been in contact over WhatsApp. It is worth seeing their store in Kyoto if not just for the adobe concrete building they purposefully designed, such amazing formwork, so modern minimalist. Their fabrics are used by some of the most reputable houses across Europe but I can’t mention who, suffice to say you would know their names.
I am pausing here to smoke my pipe I bought in Ginza with some Davidoff tobacco. I am still in that pensive mode. The sky is grey outside over the harbour. It is the perfect day to pen this. She left me in a very funny way but I don’t wish to say much more. I am trying my best to learn to contain myself to preserve the good parts.
Joni and I finished the evening by having a drink in the top floor bar of a hotel not far from the Hokan-ji Temple, then followed by a set menu at Il Ghiottone, a restaurant that Joni prefers in Kyoto and where he often brings the King of Italy when he is in town. Joni seems to know a lot of people from a lot of places and especially in the arts community. It was a great dinner and a nice way to cap off the evening. I walked back to my hotel, crossing the Duck River and up the canal, passing all those tiny little eateries that make you wonder how they turn a profit, but for which the Japanese don’t seem to be caring whether they do or don’t. All of them taking pride in their food. Across the laneway outside the lobby of the Hilton there was a small izakaya. I had made a point of having a beer there each night before or after my activities. I stopped in there, the bar owner had taken a shining to me. He was amusing to watch. Portly, infectious laugh. A nice little team. Nothing over the top, it just felt homely. I was still ruminating over everything that had happened. It sat in the back of my mind after the stimulation of the day wore off. I knew it would pass, my question to myself was for how long would it upset me, and what did my life look like moving forward. We just have to keep moving.
The next day was a big win for me, I secured a meet with Nobu Miyake. I was on my own again. I took a taxi way too early, worried about the location sent to my phone by my fixer. I arrived in the outskirts of Kyoto with no bearings. To give you an indication, there was a train line, no shops you might recognise, all of them closed, very few vending machines, buildings which looked similar, a park where children played soccer, the sky was grey, there wasn’t a Lawson or 7/11 for 600 metres, the nearest ramen shop was closed and 2km away. I walked to the 7/11 as I had time, I ate one of those pieces of spicy fried chicken and washed it down with a Coke Zero, smoked on my new e-cigarette. I don’t know if I was miserable or not, but I certainly didn’t feel chipper.
When Nobu received me in the early afternoon I was happy to be back into discovery mode and I pulled out my gyro from DJI, unloaded my backpack and stood in front of Nobu, sporting jeans, crocs, a Japanese styled robe tied off to the side and a zipper fleece beneath. He was bald, 58, an open face but perhaps slightly cautious and he began to tell me he had learned from a master, worked at Chiso and had done 40 years of kimono making. He was supported in his business by his wife Satomi and his son Hiromu. Nobu is famous, predominantly known for his “ichikake” kimono silk which is for wedding celebrations. His elaborate designs include a proprietary technique to inlay mother of pearl to the silk, perhaps inlay is incorrect, it is affixed with a resin and bordered by embroidery.
His workroom begins with tanmono rolls, approximately 17 metres per roll, which are purchased from local dealers. There are, from my knowledge, no kimono makers that are vertically integrated, instead it is a collaboration between weavers, dyers, printers and garment makers, with some having one or more processes in house but none having the whole process in one house. In Nobu’s workroom the long room is filled with three benches, of which two were active on the day. One for Hiromu, who prepares the tanmono rolls with dyes and base paints, the second for the stencilling (Satomi’s role using a precise cutting blade to cut the blue film which outlines the stencils), and the gold kinsai techniques that are deployed by Nobu.
The process is painstaking and one kimono takes about 28 days to produce, but that time frame changes depending on the complexity of the work. Nobu has been commissioned by wealthy Japanese families, celebrities and movie studios to produce unique pieces that don’t just include kimonos, he also spends time working on streetwear designs and collaborations which, as we sat down, he showed me a lips and tongue logo - instantly recognisable - he was working on a kimono for Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones. He had to be a little tight-lipped about it but the work is now finished and documented so it can be talked of now.
Part of my tour, admittedly I was charged for the experience, was that Nobu sat down with me to show me how to apply gold leaf and gold dust to graduate a flower on a silk. I had always wanted to know how the gold leaf rarely came off and as I watched him apply it I felt a sigh of relief. Between watching Satomi prepare the stencil cuts for the gold and graduated paint and dye to be applied, watching Hiromu lay down the base black for the heavier stencil and gold pieces that I was so familiar cutting, and then seeing Nobu apply gold leaf and dust, it was coming together, piecing the puzzle of what I had stumbled upon nearly 10 years ago now when I first began cutting it into bow ties. It was a bucket list thing.
She was also a bucket list thing. It came over me as I returned home in the taxi. I had known her since I was a kid. Had a little crush on her. For nearly 7 years I had been out in the wilderness, hadn’t wanted to engage in relationships, focus on my daughter, focus on my work. Whenever I skied an exotic place or trekked out into the open expanse of the Snowy Mountains on my ski tours, I always noted that my most romantic vistas were usually accompanied by some man next to me, my ski guide, a buddy, never a woman. She was a bucket list, really, genuinely. I was so happy, but as I looked back I saw some of the cracks. When we skied under the Matterhorn she didn’t care to stop, there were no great moments of affection, it wasn’t quite the Hollywood scene I had imagined. Someone had once said to me “nothing is as great or bad as you think it will be”. Nobu’s workroom was not in some glamorous part of Kyoto where they were all dressed like fancy watch makers, it was down a street that was non-descript and the workroom was as one would expect, a place where work gets done. In the end, my romance, it was beautiful, just like Nobu’s silks, but when you get it down to granular level, when you look back on those moments where you anticipated bliss, they weren’t what was anticipated. Instead, it was the small moments, when she hugged me on the way back to the hotel after dinner, when she let me wash her hair one night in Montenegro, 80s dancing for her to the sound of Alive And Kicking. It was never the high glamour parts, it was always the small moments of tenderness.
And onwards I went, from Kyoto to Hiroshima, then back to Tokyo, then Arai, Joetsu, Tokamachi, Shiga Kogen, an onsen in Niigata, then back to Tokyo … And of those I will talk about them later.
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