Miyako jofu

Miyako Jofu is defined through a chain of work on Miyako Island. The cooperative’s 2009 description ties the name to an island-based system in which ramie cultivation, yarn joining, kasuri tying, dyeing, and mallet finishing are carried out consistently to maintain quality. After washing and finishing, the cloth is inspected by specialist inspectors entrusted by Okinawa Prefecture, and cloth that passes is recognized for circulation as Miyako Jofu. In this setting, quality means a boundary made by place, plant fiber, hand-spun yarn, dyeing and weaving steps, finishing work, and inspection.

The yarn for Miyako Jofu comes from ramie, also called karamushi or mao in Japanese. In Miyako’s warm climate, the plant grows well enough to be cut every 35 to 40 days, with four to five harvests possible in a year; the May to June crop is called urizun-bu and is described as the finest. Harvesting begins at the base of the stem, followed by peeling the outer skin and scraping the inner side with a shell such as abalone shell to remove the fiber. The cloth’s first texture comes from this sequence of stem, skin, shell, and fiber.

Once the ramie fiber has been taken from the stem, both warp and weft are hand-spun. The raw fiber is split finely with fingers and nails, then twisted and joined by fingertip without knots; warp yarn uses a two-strand twist, while weft yarn uses a single-strand twist, and the work is specialized. About 10 yomi of yarn equals 6,000 meters and is finished with a spinning wheel; one kimono-length bolt requires 50 yomi, and if one spinner makes the warp and another makes the weft, each needs about half a year. Miyako Jofu’s fineness is grounded in these lengths, fingers, and months of work.

The pattern begins with cross-kasuri marks drawn into small squares on grid paper; this design is called an ezu and belongs to the kasuri-tying specialist’s field. Kasuri yarn is bleached to sharpen the pattern, bundled in groups of 16 to 18 threads depending on the design, starched, and tied on a tightening machine. Dyeing uses Ryukyu indigo mud pigment in a vat with water, alkaline material, awamori, brown sugar or syrup to help fermentation; after about one week in summer or two weeks in winter, the liquid turns green and becomes ready for dyeing. Good fermentation raises bubbles known as ai no hana, making the color process visible at the surface of the vat.

When the yarn is set on the loom, the warp is coated evenly by palm with jofu starch to reduce fuzz. After the starch dries, a thin layer of pig fat is applied so the yarn can slide more smoothly, and weaving begins. These steps continue on the loom as the cloth advances. The handwoven surface is shaped by a practical rhythm: palm-applied starch, drying, a light oiling, and the crossing of warp and weft.

After weaving, the cloth is washed in hot water, dried in the shade, and coated evenly with sweet-potato starch. Washing and starching make the cloth shrink slightly, so it is then pulled lengthwise and adjusted to the proper width. The folded cloth is placed on an Akagi board and beaten evenly with an Isunoki wooden mallet weighing about four kilograms. The finish of Miyako Jofu is built through water, starch, stretching, wood, and repeated impact.

The Miyako Textile Business Cooperative is located in Ueno Nohara, Miyakojima City. Its listed activities include joint production, joint inspection, successor training, and encouragement of hand-spun ramie yarn; in July 2021, it had 66 members. Its institutional timeline reaches back to the Miyako County Textile Association in 1902, and the current cooperative was established in 1958. Continuity here is concrete: yarn work, dyeing, weaving, inspection, and training remain organized around a local cooperative.