​PASSIONEER

Farewell, My Queen (2012) Told through the eyes of the Queen's reader — a story seen not from the side of the one who wears, but of the one who serves. A film that left me with a lingering unease I can't quite name. Perhaps I felt it all the more because I don't know much about the history surrounding Marie Antoinette. Story aside, I was moved by a glimpse of a scene in which a tapestry is being embroidered. Patient, quiet work — the same in every country. One day, an embroid

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

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

A grandmother's wish, woven into waves and plovers. Seventy years later, I am the one who wears it. A linen kimono, given to my mother as part of her wedding trousseau. An everyday garment. The occasional slub in the weave reveals it was never a costly piece. It was given to her, along with a man's jōfu, so the newlyweds could pass a summer together. The roundness of the sleeve is soft, impossibly thin — hold it to the sun, and blue sky shows through. Plovers play among the w

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 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

My mother's coming-of-age ceremony. The white palace shimmered with hand-applied gold leaf — Baroque grandeur woven into silk. My mother's coming-of-age ceremony photograph. In those days, the kimono world was swept up in Rococo and Baroque influences. The spirit of postwar Japan — catch up, surpass — poured itself into design. An overwhelming longing for the West made its way into silk. My mother's furisode was white, painted with Entasis columns and a palace in vivid color

The moment the boundary closes, existence begins. 　A garment is not born at the moment it is cut.Nor at the moment it is sewn.Even when it takes shape, it does not yet fully exist. A garment begins to exist at the moment it becomes capable of movement. In traditional Japanese tailoring, one of the processes that determines this boundary is fuki .The outer fabric and lining are brought together, and the needle advances while the edge is adjusted by fractions. What takes place