Blue & White Heaven

Arimatsu Shibori: Heritage Dyes

Our trip to visit Arimatsu of course came with many pleasures.  One was another ride on the Shinkansen to Nagoya (1 hour) before hopping on a local train to Arimatsu, blue & white heaven.

On the road again....

Arimatsu is a small former post town on the Tokaido, the old trade route connecting Tokyo and Kyoto.  Settled as early as 1608 by order of the Owari (a samurai clan), it was the 42^nd station; one of the government sanctioned stops between the two cities.  Hiroshige made a number of prints of this famous town.  Takeda Shokuro pioneered the craft of shibori as way for the small town to make an income from the many travellers. 

The main street of the old quarter has glimpses of its celebrated past.  Lined with dark timber houses typical of its Edo era beginnings, the area is most worthy of its cultural heritage endorsements. Fine preserved merchant houses accommodate a museum, kimono stores and fabric shops, including a Japanese patchwork shop.  We visited as many as we could, starting with the Arimatsu Narumi Shibori Kaikan.

This was a streetscape scene

Arimatsu is celebrated as a centre for shibori, a tie dye (resist) technique perfected to a fine art over many years of practice. Fabrics are folded, wrapped, tied, stitched and twisted to make amazing patterns.  Traditionally indigo (blue) was used but now it is not unusual to see many colours.   The process involves a number of steps, traditionally divided into male and female tasks.  Designs are prepared, templates cut and then carefully printed onto cotton cloth. 

Generally, a kimono piece is a narrow 14” wide
by 13 yards (12m) as shown 

These patterns are then tied – a process that can take up to several months.  Once ready for dyeing, the fabrics are dunked into vats of dye. Then the process of undoing all those knots – another 3 to 4 days of work in some cases, reveals beautiful patterns. Some special pieces are submitted to a number of dye baths to produce subtle yet stunning pieces. 

I found an interesting web site, ohmyhandmade with links that explain the process of shibori and offer tutorials.  Hmm, well, I’ll just add that to the “Things to Do List” for Ron (much later ron!). 

Of course, our obsessive fabric shopping did not stop with Arimatsu.  We backtracked to Nagoya to hit a few contemporary fabric stores.  Sadly our budget had been blown and a tempting large department store would only take cash.  We were nearly out of money!  So, after returning to Kyoto on late train and in order to preserve our dwindling funds for any unexpected treasures in the two tour days we had remaining, we had soup and rolls for dinner.  Very noble indeed!