Ojiya chijimi

The place behind the cloth is compact and concrete: Ojiya City, the wider Uonuma area, the Ojiya Textile Cooperative, and Orinoza on the first floor of Sun Plaza. Orinoza displays weaving tools, explains Ojiya-chijimi techniques, and offers short weaving on small looms. The name points to a working setting of ramie threads, tools, shibo texture, and snow-country finishing.

Before any shibo appears, the fiber has to become thread. Ojiya-chijimi uses choma, also called ramie or karamushi, a bast fiber taken from the plant stem. In the older hand-thread method, the fiber is split finely with the mouth and fingertips, then joined into thread; one tan of thread can take about three months in the method described by the local cooperative. The long preparation shows why the loom is only one part of the cloth’s making.

Shibo is made through force and water. The weft is twisted strongly, woven into the cloth, and then rubbed in warm water so fine wrinkles rise across the surface. Niigata describes Ojiya-chijimi as summer kimono cloth because those wrinkles keep the fabric from clinging to skin and because the ramie cloth is breathable, absorbent, and cool to the touch in humid weather. The sensation is tactile, but its cause is mechanical: twist, weaving, and yumomi.

For patterned cloth, kasuri begins before weaving with ruler marks, tying, and dyeing. At the loom, the weaver checks the edge marks and places the dyed weft one pass at a time so the pattern lands where it should. The finished motif is embedded in the weave through the alignment of marked and dyed thread.

Snow bleaching gives the finish its most local image. In the older cultural-property technique, warm-water rubbing, foot work when needed, and snow bleaching are named as concrete steps; yarn or cloth is spread on snow and repeatedly handled with water. The point is practical whitening and finishing, tied to the snow conditions of Ojiya and Uonuma. Much Ojiya-chijimi seen today should be kept separate from that stricter older method, which specifies hand-spun ramie, hand-tied kasuri, an izari loom, yumomi or foot work, and snow bleaching.

The early Edo improvement is often linked with Hori Jiro Masatoshi in the Kanbun era. Later in the Edo period, demand from Edo and Kyoto led to large production and shipments of Ojiya-chijimi, supporting Ojiya as a commercial textile town. The work also left a technical trace outside cloth: metal parts for spinning tools are connected with the later development of Ojiya’s iron industry. Today, Orinoza’s displays and the preservation association’s courses keep the sequence of ramie, kasuri, shibo, and snow bleaching teachable.