Kimono starter pack: Introduction
Kimono starter pack: Kimono's Cultural Meaning
Hello, it's been a while! Thank you for being here. Japanese life and its crazy 残業 (zangyou, overwork) almost killed me... Almost, hehe!I will be doing a series of special posts about Kimono, "Kimono starter pack":
I Cultural Meaning
II Basic knowledge (kimono is made of MANY parts and MANY kinds)
III Good kimono accounts or shops, online and in Tokyo
What is a kimono?
Kimono きもの 着物 literally means "thing to wear": Ki き 着 means to "wear on the shoulders", while mono もの 物 means "thing, object".
Before the introduction of Western clothes, the word kimono was used to refer to any cloth in Japan, and only during the late nineteenth century, kimono became the term for the Japanese national dress. It has a long history and it is one of the best examples of how clothing can be used as a cultural identifier, conferring a strong sense of identity.
Kimono are all T-shaped wrapped-front constructed in rectangular pieces of fabric. Their shape is unisex, however, they are divided in different types with different sleeves, accessories, colours and motifs depending on the gender, age, social status, occasion, formality.
Before the Meiji period, they could have been visual I.D. cards, identifying who was wearing it without a word; nowadays kimono still speak specific and symbolic messages. The first ancestor of kimono was born in Heian period (794-1192) from the Chinese Tang Dynasty's clothing which, during Edo peiord (1603-1868), evolved in the "kosode"小袖, an unisex garment with "small sleeves". It is during Edo period that kosode became the "biodata" of its wearer: Japan was completely closed and kosode became one of the key element of what meant "to be Japanese". Every Japanese person was wearing kosode, and since Edo society was hierarchically stratified the style, the motif, the fabric, the technique, and the color announced the gender, age, economical and social status of the wearer. Often, there were strict rules and regulations about kosode, for example the ethically lower but economically rich class of the merchants could not wear externally decorated kosode, like the aristocracy, so they used to beautifully decorate them in the inside. Anyway, these decorations and specific aesthetic canons forged an intrinsic link between kosode and art.
Kimono are conceived as perfect support for art expression and where art explicitly denoted the implicit: since Edo period, Japanese people were wearing on their body the art of the most famous artists of their time for expressing their rank. There was like a "vogue magazine" at the time, called Hinagatabon, in which everyone would consult the most popular and the trendiest kosode styles, and people could choose their favourite artist and style and order their kosode. For example the cherry blossom was, at the time, a trendy and beautiful design and, at the same time, the symbol of the mortal feminine beauty, mainly used during summer for leisure occasions. The oldest Hinagatabon dates of 1666 and is called "Shinsen O-Hinagata" (A New Selection of Respected Patterns"): the most famous artists of the time draw their patterns for kosode, underlying the link between kosode and art.
The idea of kosode as biodata and art explains why and how kimono embodies nowadays what it means to be Japanese. The Meiji period, which started Japanese moderation, renamed the "kosode" as "kimono" and changed the rules for wearing it: with a Meiji governmental law, kimono could not be worn anymore for work (except sumo and geisha), in particular, men were encouraged to wear Western clothes while women - usually unemployed mothers -were encouraged to wear kimono. From an anthropological point of view, while Meiji Japan was undergoing a revolutionary change on many levels, Japanese women wearing kimono were a reassuring image: the women as mothers and cultural protectors. The kimono became then a reminder of Japan's core culture despite social changes.
Before the Meiji period, they could have been visual I.D. cards, identifying who was wearing it without a word; nowadays kimono still speak specific and symbolic messages. The first ancestor of kimono was born in Heian period (794-1192) from the Chinese Tang Dynasty's clothing which, during Edo peiord (1603-1868), evolved in the "kosode"小袖, an unisex garment with "small sleeves". It is during Edo period that kosode became the "biodata" of its wearer: Japan was completely closed and kosode became one of the key element of what meant "to be Japanese". Every Japanese person was wearing kosode, and since Edo society was hierarchically stratified the style, the motif, the fabric, the technique, and the color announced the gender, age, economical and social status of the wearer. Often, there were strict rules and regulations about kosode, for example the ethically lower but economically rich class of the merchants could not wear externally decorated kosode, like the aristocracy, so they used to beautifully decorate them in the inside. Anyway, these decorations and specific aesthetic canons forged an intrinsic link between kosode and art.
Kimono are conceived as perfect support for art expression and where art explicitly denoted the implicit: since Edo period, Japanese people were wearing on their body the art of the most famous artists of their time for expressing their rank. There was like a "vogue magazine" at the time, called Hinagatabon, in which everyone would consult the most popular and the trendiest kosode styles, and people could choose their favourite artist and style and order their kosode. For example the cherry blossom was, at the time, a trendy and beautiful design and, at the same time, the symbol of the mortal feminine beauty, mainly used during summer for leisure occasions. The oldest Hinagatabon dates of 1666 and is called "Shinsen O-Hinagata" (A New Selection of Respected Patterns"): the most famous artists of the time draw their patterns for kosode, underlying the link between kosode and art.
The idea of kosode as biodata and art explains why and how kimono embodies nowadays what it means to be Japanese. The Meiji period, which started Japanese moderation, renamed the "kosode" as "kimono" and changed the rules for wearing it: with a Meiji governmental law, kimono could not be worn anymore for work (except sumo and geisha), in particular, men were encouraged to wear Western clothes while women - usually unemployed mothers -were encouraged to wear kimono. From an anthropological point of view, while Meiji Japan was undergoing a revolutionary change on many levels, Japanese women wearing kimono were a reassuring image: the women as mothers and cultural protectors. The kimono became then a reminder of Japan's core culture despite social changes.
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