Creative Methods of Reproduction: Two Japanese Weaving Innovations Developed in Imitation of Complex Foreign Textiles

 

By

Keiko Kobayashi

 

Two unique Japanese weaving methods were actually created in imitation of similar textiles woven with more advanced techniques. Both of these Japanese methods were developed around the seventeenth century, during the Edo period, by Japanese weavers who were attempting to reproduce woven surfaces that they had seen on textiles woven outside of Japan.

 

One of these is the Japanese method of producing voided velvet using weights hanging in to the pit, each of which is connected to a loop-warp. This method, which solves the tension problem for loop-warps, was founded by artisans in the weaving center of Kyoto who had no knowledge of more advanced Chinese velvet techniques.

 

The other method is the use of a back-strap loom to weave double cloth. This technique was developed on the small island of Hachijojima, in Tokyo prefecture. This island has long been the production site for kimono fabrics woven on the izaribata, a semi-frame back-strap loom. When the weavers in this island saw narrow bands of double cloth weave produced in China, they were inspired to try weaving their own sashes with this structure. They began to produce double cloth belts on a simple back-strap loom in which string harnesses were attached to both the upper side and the underside of the warps. Multiple harnesses pulling up and down formed sets that functioned as pattern repeats.

 

As a cultural pool at the end of the Silk Road, the small island nation of Japan was a reservoir for numerous treasures imported from their Asian neighbors and far-off continents. Among these imported treasures were many patterned textiles created with highly sophisticated techniques. Chinese and Korean artisans had been immigrating to Japan since around fifth century, bringing with them their cultures’ advanced techniques. At the same time, native Japanese weavers also made efforts to invent weaving methods, often without any knowledge of the original techniques they were trying to emulate.

 

Kyoto velvets and Hachijojima double cloth weave exemplify such creative Japanese methods of reproduction. These examples testify to the fact that simple techniques are not always the predecessors of their more sophisticated counterparts.

 

Keiko Kobayashi is an artist and researcher of traditional weaving. After graduating from California College of Arts and Crafts where she learned textile history from Dr. Ruth Boyer, she studied Japanese textile history under Professor Tomoyuki Yamanobe at Tama Art College in Tokyo to write a M.A. thesis titled, "Double Cloth Weave on Back-strap Loom in Hachijo Island." During the symposium of the Textile Society of America in 1998, she spoke about "Recreating a Warp-faced Compound Weave with the Jacquard Mechanism-Considering Heizo Tatsumura."  On the TSA in 2000, she spoke about the invented kasuri techniques after Meiji period, titled "Old Ties and New Points."