Shinshu tsumugi

Shinshu Tsumugi covers silk woven cloth produced across Nagano Prefecture, with regional names such as Matsumoto, Ueda, yamamayu, Iida, and Ina Tsumugi. That breadth gives the family a map rather than a single workshop address: Nagano City, Matsumoto, Ueda, Okaya, Iida, Komagane, and other production areas appear in the same Nagano textile field.

The early point is Nara-period ashiginu, a silk cloth named in the lineage of Shinshu Tsumugi. In the early Edo period, domains in Shinshu encouraged sericulture, the whole region prospered as a tsumugi textile area, and large amounts were sent yearly to Kyoto; after production weakened and survived only narrowly by the mid-Showa period, prefectural and municipal revival work after the war brought production back across Nagano.

The cloth takes shape before weaving: Shinshu Tsumugi is pre-dyed plain weave, with raw silk that may include yamamayu, tama-ito, or hand-spun mawata in the warp, and tama-ito or hand-spun mawata in the weft. A cloth made entirely from yamamayu is treated as a Shinshu specialty, keeping wild silk in the material vocabulary of the Nagano name.

After 1926, scouring with sodium sulfite and soda ash displaced the older lye method; around 1950, straw-ash lye was reconsidered and revived. Potash and other metals in the straw ash settle into the fiber, giving the cloth elegant luster, body, and the rustle of silk; mawata begins with refined cocoons spread by the fingertips, so the quality of hand-spun yarn starts before the spindle turns.

Plant dyeing brings seasonal plants, fruit trees, nuts, and local woods into the color of the thread. Among the dye materials are walnut, larch, wild cherry, birch, yew, and apple; repeated cycles of dyeing and drying build layered color, and the dyer’s judgment in the bath gives the thread its tone before it reaches the loom.

On the taka-hata loom, foot treadles open the warp, the hand-thrown shuttle carries the weft across, the warp closes, and the reed beats the thread into place. Those movements shape cloth density, thickness, and body; for kasuri yarn, the pattern position is tied by hand before dyeing, so the design is already carried in the thread when weaving begins.

The main uses are kimono bolts, obi, and haori, and the subdued luster and handwoven touch also connect Shinshu Tsumugi to present-day garment development. The Nagano Hand Silk Cooperative is formed by weaving mills, sewing factories, dyers, and apparel companies; the same prefecture also holds an integrated path from silkworm eggs to raw silk, with two of Japan’s four remaining silkworm-egg and silk-reeling factories located in Nagano.