The Lost Textile of Ryukyu - NHK WORLD PRIME

[Music] october 31st 2019 castle in okinawa was hit by a massive fire the symbol of a kingdom that thrived for 450 years reduced to cinders um [Music] [Music] the uq kingdom flourished between the 15th and 19th centuries at its heart shubhi castle was the center of politics and culture the kingdom was known for the exquisite beauty of its dyed and woven textiles in a land blessed by nature people spun thread and wove cloth and the tradition is alive even today [Music] often threatened of disappearance by the harsh trials of history every time these treasured crafts were brought back to life [Music] however one type of cloth remains an enigma [Music] a slightly translucent fabric with a pale blue sheen this is a story of the people fascinated by this elusive cloth and their attempts at unraveling its mysteries the subtropical island of okinawa a place brimming with life and color [Music] under the ryukyu kingdom's rule unique textiles developed around shooti castle in the capital one woman in tokyo has long been fascinated by this culture produced by a world-renowned textile designer in a 2018 exhibition she made a huge impact with an installation of fish-like streamers that breathed new life into traditional fabric making techniques she holds a special interest in textiles born from japanese craftsmanship her shop offers innovative fabrics she created in collaboration with craftspeople from around the country this scarf is a popular item at the moma design store in new york she made it to help preserve the techniques involved in traditional japanese kimono for sudo textiles are a reflection of people's lives through her books she takes a fresh new look at japanese dyed and woven fabrics and introduces their appeal she is particularly interested in those from okinawa which use advanced techniques to create intricate patterns [Music] this september sudo visited okinawa it was right after the official state of emergency was lifted in the prefecture of foreign [Music] foreign it's her first visit in four years there was a place she wanted to see at the beginning of her trip shooty castle the once resplendent symbol of okinawa's history has become unrecognizable [Music] okinawa was once known as the uq kingdom under the ryukyu dynasty the islands flourished for 450 years the kingdom prospered as a trade hub between china japan the korean peninsula and other asian countries [Music] this bell was cast by order of the king in 1458 [Music] inscribed on it are words that refer to the uq as a crossroad connecting the world the archipelago was a meeting point for several cultures there a broad variety of unique textiles developed workshops opened throughout the kingdom to create garments for the royal family and nobility visits a workshop that creates bingata a type of stencil dying [Music] that's all is the successor to the shiroma bingata workshop which has been around for 16 generations and was one of the major names in bingata dying during the uq era the word bingata means color and pattern it is said to have originated in the 15th century when stencil techniques and other methods [Music] [Music] do [Music] the five basic colors the black is made from mixing red blue and yellow two brushes are used one to apply the color and another to rub in the pigment to create a gradation this light and shade effect adds a sense of depth [Music] [Music] the larger bingata patterns were a luxury forbidden outside nobility and royalty bingata was a valuable trade item that brought fortune to the kingdom and the nozzles of this glue bag used for dyeing are cartridges from the us military [Music] the tools were made by aeg's grandfather aiki ironically after artisans in okinawa lost everything in the war they used objects discarded by their former enemy to help revive their craft [Music] toward the end of world war ii okinawa was the theater of fierce ground battles [Music] the strongest above ground fortification on okinawa was shuri castle withstood over 25 direct hits from our naval gunfire 120 acres of village and barracks installations which were totally destroyed [Music] this is footage of shooti taken from an american bomber the castle came under artillery fire the people's symbol of hope was burnt to the ground this stencil was made by achy shortly after the war using a map from the japanese military he found the map in an underground bunker at shuri castle a top secret wartime artifact had turned into a tool for the revival of bingata [Music] here is another of a key stencils handed down in the shiroma family depicting castle [Music] i know [Music] used the stencil to dye this fabric the memory of shootie castle shared between two generations [Music] achy passed away in 1992 the year shooti castle was rebuilt his wish to see the castle once again was never fulfilled in 2019 the castle was destroyed in another fire amid the shock aeg recalled a ryukyu poem written by his grandfather [Music] dear child standing in the darkest night wait a while i shall chase the storm away from [Music] [Music] know foreign that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign the town of hayabadu is about five kilometers south of shudi castle after the war many craftsmen of a technique called kasuri gathered here and it became a major production area visited one of the town's well-known kasuri workshops was introduced from southeast asia around the 14th century and underwent unique developments in the kingdom the color is ryukyu indigo a natural dye the island is famous for the uq kasoori is characterized by its gentle yet orderly patterns can be divided into four groups based on the inspiration for their design nature animals and plants daily items and the human body more than 600 patterns exist kasuri was an important export item for the ryukyu kingdom which set down specific rules on colors and patterns and strictly controlled its production [Music] this pattern is inspired by the shape of a carpenter square today modern designs are created based on ryukyu era patterns craftsman he shows her some precious kimonos they were collected by his father koshiro [Music] was a craftsman who dedicated himself to restoring the uq kasuri after the war [Music] almost every day he would visit a textile market and collect pre-war kimono to bring back kasuri which had been lost in the warehouse the collection included known as the lost cloth all right [Music] is [Music] my [Music] [Music] come to exist in okinawa the name tongbian first appears in okinawa related documents in the mid-18th century this manuscript chronicles the history of the uq kingdom it says that the king will reward good deeds from his vassals with tonbian [Music] only those of high status were allowed to don a ton bianchi mono the fabric was born from the uq's flourishing aristocracy acting as a crossroad between different countries the uq developed a rich culture which eventually attracted interest from europe as well this is the journal of british naval officer basil hall in the early 19th century [Music] hall describes the uq as having no military weapons of any kind he depicts the island as a peaceful utopia [Music] but the peace of the uq era came to an end with the so called the uq disposition or disposal in 1879 king shotai was moved to tokyo and the kingdom was annexed by japan [Music] one man feared that the unique culture of ryukyu would be lost [Music] adolf bastian the director of the ethnological museum of berlin who decided to gather cultural assets of the uq kingdom in 1884 more than 540 were purchased and shipped to germany they included clothes and other daily items [Music] some textiles made the journey as well sudo wanted [Music] is one of the leading artisans of a weaving technique called shuriori [Music] she's known for her work that combines tradition with innovation in the winter of 1994 after learning that germany owned a collection of textiles from the uq kingdom she immediately visited the museum for research more than 100 dyed and woven items were stored there spent six months examining the textiles [Music] she reproduced eight pieces of textile from the uq era based on her research in berlin this is the royal headdress of ryukyu she saw in berlin [Music] it's decorated with an intricate pattern woven in shuriyori techniques [Music] she recreated the pattern and applied it to a kimono [Music] among the items in the museum collection was something [Music] unexpected this white fabric with a kasooti pattern is recorded as a weave of cotton and tonebian fibers the white fibers appear to shimmer like glass in the faraway museum shkomine found a total of seven pieces marked as tonbian fabric [Music] but there was no record of the material that had been used to weave them others are trying to uncover the secret of konbian miyagi nana is a researcher of modern okinawa textiles for her the biggest feature of konbian is its transparency miyagi is studying a 19th century kimono owned by a museum in okinawa it was first believed to be bashofu a textile woven with fibers from banana trees [Music] [Music] [Music] my yanagi yoshikuni is known as a researcher of okinawa's textiles he mainly focuses on the twist of the threads twisting is a process that binds fibers together to make stronger and longer threads that the transparency of tongbian comes from how the threads are made he picks up one kimono it's a ton beyond garment that his father and textile craftsman yanagi yoshitaka obtained in okinawa before the war [Music] he was visiting the island with his uncle yanagi muneyoshi who led the folk crafts movement [Music] it's adorned with an indigo blue bingata pattern [Music] the down to its very threads tonbian is a mystery that's captured the imagination of many one scholar believes the threat of the tongbian is taken from a type of agavi plant matayoshi mitsukuni organic you [Laughter] [Music] actually matayoshi specializes not in textiles but in computer science [Music] me intrigued by the plant's name tongbian matayoshi's inquisitive mind led him to see for himself if he could extract fibers from it makayoshi was able to obtain pure white fibers he believes these are what ponbian is made of before the trip sudol showed us something at her shop yeah she had been in touch with yet another person in pursuit of tonbian she had sent letters to sudo to share her findings [Music] my the letters were from lubar miyahira gingko who passed away in 2018. kinko was the daughter of miyahira hatsuko a living national treasure in the field of shiriori weaving growing up gingko watched her mother work and was inspired to pursue a path in textiles after attending art school she went to france to study goblin tapestry weaving which she then incorporated into her shooti pieces she later taught at university while continuing her quest to create the ultimate shuriori gingko first encountered tombian in 1982 crafts that had been taken to the mainland and survived the war were brought back to okinawa for the first time in nearly 50 years crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of the long-lost beauty of ryukyu ginko saw people reacting to tombian that was when her pursuit of the enigmatic textile started [Music] [Music] she wanted to hold its threads and weave the long-lost fabric with her own hands this became her mission as a weaver of [Music] shuriori [Music] ginkgo had kept a huge collection of ton beyond related items and documents sudo was given the opportunity to examine them these threads in her collection suggest ginkgo's theory [Music] raimi is a perennial plant in the nettle family said to have come from china the islands of miyako and ishigaki and okinawa are known for their raimi cloth people still cherish remy today as a part of everyday life [Music] fibers are taken from the stems outer layer of skin [Music] the skin is divided by hand into increasingly thin strips gradually becoming white strands [Music] they are spun together carefully to form a long thread [Music] fabrics made from this raimi thread were known for their high quality they were offered to the court in the uq era [Music] nature also plays its part [Music] the sea water and sunlight help the dye to set and to further bleach the white areas this process is still alive in the yayama region which imported so-called tonbian a local specialty from fujian [Music] but the manchurian incident of 1931 escalated the conflict between japan and china and imports of tongbian stopped [Music] several times and she finally identified a town in fujian province that had a raimi field seeing the raimi thread from that town ginkgo was convinced it was ton bian hoping to back this with scientific evidence she asked an expert in plant fibers to conduct tests on their structure the research concluded that the raimi and tombian could be considered the same thing [Music] tonbian is remy from china that became gingko's answer [Music] was different from any she had seen before this becomes clearer through comparison the left one is from china and the right from okinawa foreign it was their first time using chinese remy weaving cloth from it proved extremely difficult [Music] ginkgo's mother and living national treasure hatsuko also joined in the effort [Music] to put less strain on the delicate raimi threads they reproduced a loom from pre-war times [Music] the threads became especially fragile when dry so they constantly applied water as they wove when they finally completed one roll of fabric about 10 meters long two years had passed gingko's pursuit of nearly 30 years had culminated in this single piece of [Music] clothing the sheer fabric faintly reflects light [Music] my [Music] sadly ginkgo later passed away her studio was closed down in september this year tonbian was once again without an artisan to weave it [Music] at the end of her trip sudo made one last visit to shooti castle [Music] a long time ago it was a place where people and cultures met and the cradle of okinawa's unique textiles [Music] [Music] um the uq's distinctive sense of beauty has often been faced with the threat of disappearance yet every time it has been revived by the hands of passionate creators together with the mysterious tonbian they carry okinawa's wish for peace and continue to enchant people across time and beyond borders you

Channel: NHK WORLD-JAPAN

Views: 95,726

Rating: 4.9230323 out of 5

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Id: ku2IJOSGJfc

Length: 49min 20sec (2960 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 09 2020