Is the kimono becoming extinct?

JOURNALISTIC INCOMPETENCE takes many forms. It’s easy to spot the inaccuracies, which are as ubiquitous as the comic strips, and bias is so blatant it’s hard to believe any journalist could maintain a straight face while claiming impartiality.

There’s another form of ineptitude, however, which is less frequently noted than the others, but just as likely to cheat the readers. That’s the presentation of true information stripped of so much context it renders the article useless. Context is a crucial element when reporting about foreign countries– all the more so for countries as different from the West as Japan.

Exhibit A is this article called Twilight for the Kimono by Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post. Faiola gets the basic facts right: kimono sales have plunged over the past decade, few skilled artisans remain capable of creating a wearable work of art from scratch, and kimono production is either being outsourced to China or performed on an electric loom. But everything else about the article, which is a bit longer than average, is out of focus.

Do the Japanese wear kimono as much as they once did? Of course not, but anyone who’s watched television or casually glanced at newspaper and magazine photos over the past 50 years knows that. Westerners don’t don formal wear as frequently as they used to either, but tuxedos are still worn by American boys at high school proms and grooms at weddings.

Faiola wants to make the point that the number of Japanese wearing kimono at formal occasions is dwindling to such an extent an entire culture is threatened. But he could just as easily say the same thing about people in the West. At my father’s funeral six years ago, my uncle and I were the only men out of about 50 to show up in a necktie. (If you don’t think that’s odd, take a good look at how people are dressed at funerals in American movies and TV programs.)

It’s as if the author thinks the Japanese still exist on an exotic island isolated from the rest of the world impervious to trends in the way people live everywhere else. Yet, for as much as everyone throughout the world dresses down nowadays, there continue to be men and women in the West and in Japan who wear formal clothing when they think the occasion demands it. What’s true for American kids at their high school prom is also true for 20-year-old Japanese women at their coming-of-age ceremony—an important event that Faiola neglects to mention, by the way.

Another reason for the decline of the kimono is that they are deucedly difficult to wear. Most men in the West who wear a tuxedo or dinner jacket are incapable of tying the bow tie by hand, for example. That’s child’s play compared to the effort involved in wearing a kimono; almost no Japanese woman can dress themselves formally without help. In fact, the special events at which a woman would wear a kimono usually involve getting a special hairstyle at a beauty salon. Many beauticians help in the process of dressing, and even that requires a license with a special test.

Another problem with the article is Faiola’s confusion about who actually wears the clothing he’s writing about. It’s an expensive proposition to purchase a kimono and its many accessories. He mentions wealthy businessmen spending $25,000 at a time for a kimono a quarter of a century ago. One man still charges $8,000 for his best obi—and those are just the belts.

That’s obviously far beyond the budgetary limits of most people. Faiola is in fact writing about the decline of a small population of highly trained artisans making luxury items for a miniscule segment of the population: royalty and the cultural, political, and business elites. Kimono sales are tumbling, but not as much to those groups as to the bulk of the population. Consider the 102-year-old master weaver Yasujiro Yamaguchi, perhaps indulging his memory, as he recalls:

“The women, and men too, would come to Nishijin in kimonos to order more kimonos,” he said. “The color! They would fill the streets with their color, and leave so much cash that we used rulers to count the stacks of yen because it was faster that way. Those were the days when the sounds of working looms were everywhere”

What sort of people had the wherewithal to go to a shop and drop so much cash it had to be measured by a ruler?

Consider also this passage by Faiola:

In a society that values the unspoken, its colors and patterns have for centuries served as an alternative form of speech. Without uttering a word, a well-chosen kimono can speak volumes about a wearer’s sorrow or joy, animosity or amorousness. It is essential to the classical arts of Kabuki and Noh theater, the tea ceremony and ikebana, or flower arranging. In Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century literary masterpiece, “The Tale of Genji,” gifts of kimonos in scented silk are extensions of a romancing prince’s spirit.

What sort of people were so well-to-do or so cultured that they could afford to spend that sort of money for a whole wardrobe of kimono capable of expressing joy, animosity, sorrow, or amorousness depending on their mood on a particular day?

Now consider: what sort of men in the West actually own a top hat and tails?

To be sure, the average person did own and wear kimono more frequently in the past, and they were expensive. (My wife says you might be able to get away with spending about $10,000 for a decently made item, with all the accessories, today.) That’s why they were considered to be family heirlooms, and in one sense, financial investments. When the food shortages started causing serious hardship during the war, women from the city took their kimono to the countryside and used them to barter with farmers for food. And those deals got done, too—they were negotiable instruments.

Despite the article’s general accuracy, there are still a couple of slip-ups:

Restricting the legs to doll-like steps, the kimono changes the way both sexes walk, making even the clumsiest appear elegant.

That’s true for women, much less so for men. But then people in formal attire in the West also tend to walk more elegantly, if only because of the mood created by the clothing. And high heels and certain kinds of formal dresses also restrict women’s movements and the way they walk.

Twenty-five years ago, production of Nishijin kimonos and obi — elaborate kimono sashes — was thriving, with highflying Tokyo businessmen purchasing $25,000 kimonos for wives and lovers like so many boxes of roses.

Wouldn’t Faiola be better off saving that sort of prose for a novel?

Be that as it may, I came to Japan 23 years ago, and while kimono production might have been thriving then, one seldom, if ever, saw them other than in specific places for specific reasons. The same sort of women wore kimono then for the same occasions as today: women working in ryokan (Japanese style inns); ryotei (old-fashioned restaurants); the proprietors of upscale drinking establishments catering to doctors, Buddhist priests, and well-to-do businessmen; geisha (though their numbers are limited); the hostess and some guests at banquets; and most women for other formal occasions. Men still wear them for some formal occasions, though that’s increasingly seen as a somewhat eccentric style choice, in much the same way that American author Tom Wolfe wears spats.

Some see a light for the industry in the unlikeliest of places — Tokyo’s hyper-hip Harajuku district, where Goth geisha in punk makeup and secondhand black kimonos strut the streets flaunting attitude and skull-faced leather purses. “Right now, they are wearing cheap, used kimonos they bought for a few dollars in a bargain bin,” said Toshimitsu Ikariyama, president of the Nishijin Textile Industrial Association.

Please. “Goth geisha” is a ridiculous phrase. If you’re one, you’re not the other. He really does need to write a novel to get this stuff out of his system. Second, those garments have been chopped and channeled to such an extent it would be difficult to call them kimono anymore. And they’re certainly not being worn in a kimono style—Goth geisha girls flaunting attitude in Harajuku wouldn’t know how. They’re probably being used as glorified robes. In any event, this hyper-hip style is low on the national radar—so low, I’ve never seen it on TV or a magazine, much less in public.

Finally, let’s end at the beginning, with the title: Twilight for the Kimono. What happens after twilight? The end of the day and the dead of night. Would Faiola have us believe that kimono will become extinct in Japan? I hope that’s not his intention, especially as he goes to the trouble of interviewing Yasuto Kawamura, a man he describes as a maverick for trying to save the tradition by outsourcing the production overseas.

The kimono is unlikely to die. Just as some Westerners still wear formal clothing on some occasions, so some Japanese still occasionally wear kimono.

And when they do, the women still look great!

Note: I ran across this article a few months ago when I was putting together this site, and meant to use it earlier. Still, I don’t think it’s time-dependent.

And try this for a nice website presenting the ABCs of kimono. (It’s also on the sidebar at right.)