Dying Arts, Part Deux

Pun intended this time.  We visited the home and workshop of the Matsueda family, where Takahiro Matsuda is the fifth generation in his family to carry on the art of Kurume ikat.  Both Takahiro's grandfather and father (shown here) were named Important Cultural Assets.  Like Suzanne Ross (who is singlehandedly keeping lacquer work alive) the title of Important Intangible Cultural Asset or National Treasure is bestowed by the government and is very prestigious.  Unfortunately, unlike the MacArthur Genius awards in the United States, the titles carry a great deal of prestige but no money grants.  Takahiro Matsueda is known as the Son of a National Treasure.

The Matsueda family makes hand woven cotton fabric with indigo, and devised a technique for dying each thread, warp and woof, before weaving.  In a painstakingly slow process, a design is created, essentially on graph paper (no computers when this technique was created.)  Then, every individual thread is marked for where it should be white, and that sections (well, hundreds of sections on each thread) and each mark is covered with a piece of "araso," the bark of hemp,  that is tied on with a one inch tail of the araso hanging.  The threads are then dyed in huge vats of indigo.  Of course, the Matsuedas make the liquid indigo dye themselves by processing indigo plants.  After the threads are dry, the tails of the araso are pulled and the thread where the araso was is white while the rest is deep blue.  The material is woven with these threads, creating an identical design on both sides.  I watched the demonstrations and videos and still don't quite get it.  There are literally hundreds of threads going in each direction.  How do they manage to keep them all in the right order?  I watched an artisan doing just that and I still couldn't understand it.

We had arrived in Fukuoka by train the previous day and went right to the Tatsumi Sushi Main Brand for an outstanding sushi lunch.  Then a visit to (another) Shinto shrine and the beautiful and interesting Kyushu National Museum.  Japanese families take their daughters at age five and nine, and their sons at age seven to the shrine for a ceremony.  The children are dressed in traditional kimonos.  We were lucky to be there to watch the ceremony for one little girl and her family.

We had a little time to walk around Fukuoka and now we are off to Kyoto.