Arimatsu-Narumi shibori

Arimatsu and Narumi sit in southern Nagoya, with the craft closely tied to present-day Midori Ward and nearby production areas. Cotton shibori began in Arimatsu in the early Edo period, and the neighboring Narumi area developed with it; travelers moving along the Tokaido carried towels and yukata away from the roadside towns as souvenirs.

The old streetscape in Arimatsu still includes buildings from the late Edo period through the Taisho era. Local character here means a concrete setting: the old Tokaido road, Narumi as a post-town area, southern Nagoya workshops, and cloth that could be folded, carried, and used after the journey.

Arimatsu-Narumi Shibori uses silk or cotton fabric, with binding thread made from cotton, silk, or hemp. Work begins with stencil cutting and blueflower underdrawing, then moves through sewing, wrapping, or binding the cloth, dyeing it, removing the thread, and steam finishing. The places squeezed tightly by thread resist the dye, so pale or white marks appear when the cloth is opened.

The process gives the surface a visible memory of hand pressure. Flat stitching, mountain stitching, wrapped stitching, winding, and protective wrapping all place the resist in the tension of thread and fingers; each edge of a motif comes from cloth being folded, sewn, wrapped, pulled, and tightened.

The family includes around a hundred binding methods, including Miura shibori, kanoko shibori, tesuji shibori, kumo shibori, itajime shibori, hakozome shibori, arashi shibori, and murakumo shibori. The names point to different stands, folds, windings, and compression methods: Miura shibori uses a Miura stand, kanoko shibori uses a kanoko stand with two to seven wraps of thread, and itajime shibori folds cloth lengthwise into triangles or squares before fixing it with templates and thread.

A Meiji-period kimono in the Nagoya City Museum collection shows autumn grasses, descending geese, and a moon on cotton cloth dyed in a single indigo color. The garment combines methods such as Miura shibori, orinui shibori, boshi shibori, and awase-nui shibori, giving geese, grasses, moon, and open cloth different edges and densities.

Arimatsu-Narumi Shibori is shaped by divided work across many hands. Stencil cutting, underdrawing, binding, dyeing, thread removal, and steam finishing each form part of the sequence; binding work spread as side work among farm women, while intermediaries carried fabric out and collected the bound cloth when it was ready.

That work network reached beyond Midori Ward to Minami Ward, Showa Ward, Toyoake, the Chita Peninsula, and the Mikawa region. The continuity of the craft has a physical shape: one person cuts a stencil, another applies blueflower lines, another binds thread according to a method, and others dye and finish the cloth as the pattern gradually takes form.

Arashi shibori wraps cloth around a log about four meters long, winds thread around it, compresses the cloth, and places the whole log into dye. When opened, the cloth shows diagonal lines that resemble wind-driven rain, a pattern created by the angle of the log, the thread, the compressed cloth, and the dye bath.

In the Nagoya City Museum context, arashi shibori is associated with Suzuki Kinzo and its rainlike effect. The method shows the range of Arimatsu-Narumi Shibori: some marks come from tiny knots tightened at the fingers, while others require a long log and an entire length of cloth to be turned, compressed, and dyed.

Arimatsu-Narumi Shibori is long associated with kimono fabric, haori, and yukata, and in recent years it also appears in handkerchiefs, scarves, lap blankets, dresses, skirts, T-shirts, hats, and parasols. The cloth moves from formal dress into hand-held items, outdoor shade, and everyday garments, while bound white marks and dyed fields remain visible.

Interior pieces also use shibori, including sliding-door panels and lamps. When the cloth leaves the category of kimono fabric, the sequence of stencil, blueflower line, binding thread, dye, thread removal, and finishing still gives the surface a recognizable rhythm of handwork.