​PASSIONEER

The arrow feather pattern is striking. Haikara-san. How nostalgic. A shōjo manga from my school days. In 2017, it came back as an animated film. A manga of Taishō romance, but above all a love story. Next to the anime Demon Slayer, also set in the Taishō era, it feels like an entirely different age. In Haikara-san, petals fly everywhere, and your heart skips a beat. The man the heroine marries is a total heartthrob. The heroine moves freely between Japanese and Western clothe

Official PV (Japanese) I watched Demon Slayer. It is a huge hit out there. I had heard it moves you with its family love and brotherly love. I will set the story aside this time. What caught my attention was the patterns on the kimono the characters wear. Each one is carefully chosen to suit the character's personality. Tanjiro wears ichimatsu, the checkerboard. It is extremely famous. Nezuko wears asanoha, the hemp leaf pattern. So cute. Hemp grows straight and strong. In Ja

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris 【A dress goes to the one who dares to dream. I watched the film. Everywhere, there was the scent of a Paris I remember so fondly. It felt like a dream. It is based on a novel by the English writer Paul Gallico. Mrs. Harris works as a cleaner in London. She is in great demand, and works without rest. One day, at a client's home, she falls in love at first sight with a Dior dress that belongs to the lady of the house. And she decides that she will buy

The same place. Do you call it a maison, or a workshop? I saw it a while ago. You can pretty much guess the plot. The heroine clashes with Madame and storms out of the maison. But she'll come back, surely. Otherwise, the film would be over. (laughs) Even so, the inside of the Dior maison is on screen. That alone made it worth watching. Real handwork lives there. And Madame is, without question, magnificent. In French, it's a "maison." In Japanese, a "workshop." A place where

The other day, this film popped up as a "recommendation" on a streaming service, and I watched it by chance. The trailer pulled me in with the beauty of its hand sewing. I didn't even know what a caftan was. 【On the other side of the world, someone was holding the same needle.】 A caftan (Caftan / Kaftan), it seems, is a loose, long robe that has been worn for centuries across the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa. Its structure, remarkably, is close to a kimono. I felt an

A pattern once sewn as a wish for a child's growth now survives as a single piece of cloth. A pattern once sewn as a wish for a child's growth now survives as a single piece of cloth. Combinaison is made from the same fabric used for nagajuban, the underlayer worn beneath a kimono. On the secondhand market, white and pale pink pieces are everywhere, and they go for next to nothing. Unusual designs and true antiques are the ones everyone wants to keep for themselves, so they r

Nagajuban counts as underwear. Under a Western suit, or under a dress. You would never walk around the house in a nagajuban alone. And there is no fixed rule for what fabric a nagajuban should be made of. Looking at my mother's nagajuban, they are made from chirimen, rinzu, mousseline, hemp — all kinds of materials, and some are remade from haori that had grown too showy to wear as is. A quickened pulse, hidden exactly where no one looks. There is a view that says: it's under

Made to sit against bare skin, like an extension of the skin itself. The undergarment worn beneath a beautiful kimono is called nagajuban. It too is, by default, 100% silk, hand-sewn. But lately, extreme weather has made Japanese summers unbearably hot. Wearing a full kimono is hard enough in summer as it is. Bras, sleeveless tops, mini skirts. None of that can compete with a kimono when it comes to beating the heat. So summer nagajuban are made of hemp, or skipped altogether

Teaching a curve, little by little, to a cloth that was born straight. Kimono are cut in straight lines. The bolt is roughly 38cm wide, and that is what we use. Making a combinaison from it, that constraint alone creates problems. To let the beauty of drape come through, an A-line is ideal, and it follows the line of the body. There is a famous scene, in an old film, where a dress catches an updraft and billows. We won't go that far. But light, soft fabric clings to the body

No one looks twice. And yet — 100% silk. Thread spun by a silkworm with its life. In wasai, there is a technique called kurimawashi — the art of endless renewal.A kimono is a garment meant to be re-tailored. You unstitch what has been worn thin, and join together whatever still holds its worth, breathing new life into it. The most common example is the nagajuban — the underlayer worn beneath a kimono, pieced together from mismatched scraps of fabric: body, collar, sleeves, ea

The unforgettable sensation of wearing what you have tailored. The true comfort born from hand-sewn "slack. The moment you slip your arms into a garment you have tailored with your own hands—it is a sensation of pure, unprecedented ecstasy. Until that very second, a sense of trepidation lingers, only to be instantly transfigured into profound joy. To bear witness to that exact moment of transformation is, as an instructor, the ultimate reward. The fabric conforms seamlessly,

The Art of Hand-Sewing, Passed Down Through Generations My mother's generation could sew their own yukata. Perhaps some schools still teach it today — not just specialized institutions, but ordinary ones. For those of us who wish to preserve traditional craft, this is deeply encouraging. And yet. In a world that prizes efficiency, that demands we move faster, to sit and sew by hand feels almost radical. As AI reshapes everything around us, the hands of a craftsperson may be o

The Yukata is one of the few kimonos where you can play boldly, regardless of your age. While often spoken of as the symbol of summer, its origins lie in the bathhouse as a post-bath robe, historically known as a katabira. Did they simply wipe off the moisture with a tenugui towel, throw it on, and step outside? Or was it worn to elegantly entice someone? Though the bathhouses of today differ greatly from the past, the imagination runs wild. Here is the second indulgence enco

Wrapping the back seam with a sebuse cut from the same cloth. One small step that changes everything. The sebuse is sewn along the back seam, then wrapped with fabric cut from the same cloth. This means the center back is stitched twice — creating a stronger, more durable seam. In an era when lining panels are increasingly left out, wrapping with a sebuse makes perfect sense. And yet — it is painstaking work. How many seamstresses today still make a sebuse from matching fabri

Chikusen kago-zome. Stripes on one side, kumadori on the other. One fabric. Two faces. It's almost yukata season. In Tokyo, there's an unspoken rule: once Sanja Matsuri is over, you can step outside in a yukata. In other regions, the local festival sets the cue. Japan stretches so far from north to south that the turning of seasons feels entirely different depending on where you stand. There is no shortage of wasai craftspeople. Overseas production has grown in recent years,

The same kimono, reborn. Re-dyed, resewn — the butterflies from my seventh year still dancing. My Shichi-Go-San. This white kimono would one day be reborn as deep purple. The butterfly motif, carried forward into its next life. It is widely known that KIMONO — Japanese traditional clothing — is made to be remade. The needles used in Japanese sewing are exceptionally fine. Unlike the holes left by a sewing machine, the needle's path disappears once the fabric is unstitched and

Unpicked and washed silk fabric returned to its original bolt form, ready for its next life. The Sole Reason Wasai is Hand-sewn Wasai (traditional Japanese tailoring) is a garment designed from the very beginning with "remaking" in mind. If sewn with a machine, needle marks permanently scar the fabric. That is precisely why Wasai needles are crafted to be incredibly fine, and even our basting threads are far more delicate than those used in Western dressmaking. Our tools are

The hakama became an obi, and now wraps around my waist. From my grandmother, to my mother, to me. This crimson obi was once my great-grandmother's ceremonial hakama — the long trailing skirt worn by court ladies in the Imperial Palace. Passed from my grandmother to my mother, it arrived in my hands already transformed: my grandmother had remade it into a nagoya obi for my mother to wear. I am not a small woman, and it is a little short on me. But as long as my arms can reach

1928. The enthronement of Emperor Showa. My great-grandmother attended in a kouchigi court robe. This is where the hundred-year journey begins. In 1928, my great-grandparents attended the imperial enthronement ceremony of Emperor Showa.My great-grandmother stood there in a ko-uchigi, dressed according to court custom. After the war, during a time of severe food shortages, my grandmother—who had married into the family—kept this garment.She never sold it.Even then, it must hav

Unfolded. Laid flat. Time taken to think. Whose shoulders will it rest upon next? In the 2010s, I had my mother's furisode from the 1950s re-dyed for my daughter's coming-of-age ceremony. I chose the color of the deepest ocean floor. Beneath that depth, only the gold leaf remained visible — rising to the surface like light from another world. The mysterious beauty seemed to whisper of my daughter's unknown future, stirring both anxiety and wonder. And now, that re-dyed furiso