Kimonos

Carrie Chiu
Japanese Civilization
3 December 2001

     After the black ships arrived in the ports of Japan in 1853, some of Japan’s arts altered due to Western influences.  A noticeable influence from the West is the change in dress of the Japanese.  Kimonos, which have been discarded by men a century ago due to the modernity and efficiency of the Western dress, are still worn by many women on formal occasions (Dalby 384).  Although kimono, wafuku, is now replaced by Western clothing, yofuku, and is not as popular in comparison to the Western style, the Japanese attire in modern time has become to represent the national attire and Japan’s cultural identity.  The evolution of the kimono reflects how Japan has made a piece of clothing into a symbol of the nation.

     Kimono is the Japanese word for “the thing worn,” and it is a universal symbol of Japan.  It represents the traditional beauty with a sense of timelessness and endurance.  As a simple form of clothing with a single basic pattern, the kimono is also a traditional symbol in its simplicity and beauty.  Most kimonos are basically all the same size and shape, and a sash, or obi, worn around the waist adjusts the length.  Kimonos are cut and sewn flat from full-width lengths of cloth.  To the Japanese, kimono simply means “clothing.”  It is the modern descendant of the kosode, which translates as “small sleeves”; the small sleeves refer to the opening of the wrist.  The kimonos, prevalently associated with Japan, are the long flowing sleeves of the furisode, “swinging sleeves” (Goldberg 31).

     During the Heian period (C.E. 794-1192), women had to be protected by multi-layered clothes, the kimono, and the subtle matching of the different colored layers were considered the great arts of everyday life that revealed the character of the owner.  The Heian period was “an age of taste” (Morris 34).  The woman’s skill in matching colors and choosing clothes was a better guide to her character and charm than the physical features she was born with.  The details about a woman’s clothing tell others about her artistic sensibility (Morris 194).  Even the smallest details were significant.  Artistic sensibility was more highly valued than ethical goodness.  The Heian society was “on the whole governed by style rather than by moral principles” (Morris 195).  As a result, the feminine clothing was elaborate and cumbersome.  The kimono consisted of an inter alia, a heavy outer costume and a set of unlined silk robes.  The standard number of robes was twelve.  Each layer is meticulously selected with “an eye of the most attractive and original colour combination” (Morris 204-205).  The blending of patterns and colors was important, because the place of virtue was replaced by good looks.

    In contemporary Japan, the kimono has become separated from everyday life.  It is reserved for holidays, and Western clothing is considered the daily wear (Denoon 256-257).  As a result, kimono dressing itself is an “esoteric knowledge of a few” (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).  Special kimono schools offer courses to modern women who lack familiarity with kimono and kimono dressing.  The classes teach women how to put on a kimono, walk and sit down, and fold the garment (Tobin 28).  This shows a reverse role of reeducating a westernized consuming public, Japan itself, of its own cultural heritage.  The stores that once hired consultants to familiarize Japan with Western apparel now hire teachers to demonstrate how to put on a kimono.  Moreover, many times mothers do not know enough to help their daughters (Tobin 54).  Japanese women regard their ignorance of kimono dressing as an embarrassing flaw in proper etiquette and femininity (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).  Mothers are known to send their daughters to kimono schools as part of their bridal preparation to attempt in correcting this flaw; otherwise, experts are relied on to dress the daughters on rare ceremonial occasions that require a kimono.  In prewar Japan, the art of kimono dressing was not part of bridal training because wearing a kimono was an essential part of everyday life.

    Kimonos are currently associated almost exclusively with special occasions.  They are worn at the New Year, tea ceremonies, and occasionally to temples and shrines, graduations and weddings.  Kimonos are also involved with the betrothal gift.  Betrothal gifts are usually exchanged before the actual wedding and they typically include expensive kimonos (Hendry 141).  Kimonos may also be used as a rite of passage.  For example, members of Soka Gakkai dress the child in a special kimono, after around 30-33 days of being born, to show that the child is now a social existence as a member of an extended family and a community (Hendry 134-135).  Another special occasion for women to dress up in a kimono is the “coming of age” ceremony (seijin shiki).  On the 15th of January after the young lady’s twentieth birthday, she becomes legally responsible for her own behavior and may vote in local and national elections.  Most young ladies dress in their valuable kimonos and attend a civic ceremony in their hometown (Hendry 138).  Subsequently, kimonos have gradually found their place beside the refined arts of tea ceremony and flower arrangement (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).

    The kimono, as the national costume, expresses taste, character and social status; the color, decorations, and design on a kimono accommodate changes in individuality and fashion.  Young girls wear brightly-colored kimono with fancy patterns, and older women wear subdued colors with little or no pattern (Goldberg 33).  Originally, the kimono was undecorated because of “Buddhist conservatism” (Goldberg 31), since Buddhism believes in a simple life.  By the Muromachi period (1336-1568), limited embellishment was allowed due to the cultural and artistic renaissance; the period was characterized by creativity.  After this period, the kimonos are dated according to “patterning and techniques, rather than tailoring which changed minimally after this time” (Goldberg 32).  The intricacy of the patterning and lines demonstrates the skill of the designer.  The designer creates the colors and “motifs laden with meaning” (Goldberg 32).  The design is usually subtle and monochromatic; its pattern is apparent only when light reflects off its surface (Goldberg 32).  Further embellishing consists of needlework, using silk and gold-leaf wrapped cotton in a variety of stitches; new forms and added details are created (Goldberg 33).
The materials and techniques greatly affect the impact and final outcome of the image created; the subject matter illustrated on kimonos often fall into one of five categories.  The first category consists of the natural world, which is complied of seasons, flowers, birds, clouds, insects, etc.  The second type of subject matter includes human-made objects like fans, bridges and buildings.  A third category consists of imagery based on well-known poems, literature, folk tales and legends easily recognized.  The fourth subject matter is symbols from Chinese Confucianism and Japanese Buddhism.  The last category is small, intricate geometric patterns usually based on nature.  Examples of such patterns include mountain motifs, tortoise shell grids and thunderbolt zigzags (Goldberg 33).  The images on kimono are complex and varied.  Dyeing, painting, applied metallic leaf and needlework are some techniques used to create the images.  More than one artist is typically involved in creating a kimono.  Each artist is a specialist in certain techniques.

    While the Western attire is usually adapted to the female body, the kimono requires the female body to be made to fit the ideal cylindrical shape appropriate for the kimono.  The modern art of kimono dressing has developed this aim to an extreme (Goldstein-Gidoni 361).  Essential items for kimono dressing, called komono, are required.  These items consist of various padding, belts, cords, and clips.  Types of padding include gauze, towels, and belts.  If the woman is thin she will need extra padding; if she is fat, her breasts will be flattened.  After the padding is done, special undergarments are carefully wrapped around the body and tied with cloth cords, and then fixed with an elastic belt (Goldstein-Gidoni 361).  None of these accessories were necessary when kimonos were a part of everyday life.  In modern Japan, the komono is specially produced and sold at kimono schools, kimono shops, and wedding parlors. Komono has evolved to be a “requisite artifact of femininity that any respectable Japanese woman should have” (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).  Expert hands produce the right kimono appearance through a complicated process aimed at achieving a cylindrical form of the woman’s body.
Japanese women are made into representations of Japaneseness via the role of the kimono in modern Japan.  For example, the participation in the coming-of-age ceremony in recent years is no longer the main focus of the day.  It is the attire worn, the expensive kimono, that is most relevant.  The process of kimono dressing produces “a cultural idiom called the ‘Japanese woman’” (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).  A great deal of effort and money are invested to produce the perfect woman in a kimono.  Parents view the high expense of purchasing a kimono, as a social must.  Kimonos cost about $10,000.  Some “modern” girls prefer to spend the money differently.  For example, some want a car instead of a kimono.  Parents, on the other hand, disagree because the kimono is like a proof that they worked hard all their lives and can now afford it (Goldstein-Gidoni 359).  To parents, if they do not dress their daughters, it is as if they could not reach this stage.  Parents, as a result, may feel ashamed.  Lately, there has been a choice to rent kimonos instead of purchasing them.  Mothers of coming-of-age girls who cannot afford the expense of a kimono look for cheaper ways to dress their daughters in the desired costume (Goldstein-Gidoni 360).  A kimono wrapped around the female body has become the national symbol of tradition and “so perfectly completes the image of Japaneseness” (Goldstein-Gidoni 351).

    By wearing a kimono, a woman is in touch with her feelings, because the kimono augments one’s mind and makes one feel at peace.  One cannot run while wearing a kimono due to the tightness of it; therefore, calmness is obtained because the ability to react immediately vanishes.  This causes one to think before one acts.  The kimono is more than just a constraint on the body; it has a mental influence.  This is the difference between the Western and Japanese attire.  When one wears a Western dress, the feeling of activity and moving emerges.  On the contrary, when one puts on a kimono, a feeling of tranquility and an urge to quit work is stimulated.  The kimono spirit is so deeply rooted in Japanese culture that when a woman puts on a kimono it becomes part of her body (Goldstein-Gidoni 354-355).  Kimono experts also view the difference in clothing as a basic cultural distinction between Japanese and Western.  Norio Yamanaka, a distinguished figure in the world of kimono, believes that “after the war many things entered [Japan] from America . . . Because of this, it became necessary to save something Japanese, and thus kimono has gradually become a national costume (minzoku isho)” (Goldstein-Gidoni 354).  The kimono expresses not only the Japanese aesthetic sensibilities but the soul of Japan as well.

    Kimonos had various styles of everyday and festive clothing in premodern Japan, but in present Japan only one mode has remained.  The word kimono used in contemporary Japanese refers to the modern kimono, which “stems from the decorative festive clothing worn on special occasions” (Goldstein-Gidoni 354).  Cultures move and change shapes, as does the representation of a kimono (Denoon 256-257).  “Like cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji,” the kimono is one of the “best-known symbols of Japan as a nation” (Goldstein-Gidoni 366). With the impact of Matthew C. Perry’s visit to Japan and the following years of Western influence, the kimono in modern Japan has become a symbol of native Japaneseness.
 

Works Cited

Dalby, Liza Crihfield.  Kimono: Fashioning Culture.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Goldberg, Barbara.  “The Japanese Kimono.”  School Arts April 1993: 92.

Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra.  “Kimono and the Construction of Gendered and Cultural Identities.”
 Ethnology Fall 1999: 38.

Hendry, Joy.  Understanding Japanese Society.  London: Routledge, 1995.

Morris, Ivan.  The World of the Shining Prince.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, 1964.

Tobin, Joseph.  Re-made In Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society.
 London: Yale University Press, 1992.
 

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