Kimono

Reviews in History, 2015

Furusato.Publishing.Onishi.Japan, 2024

The text will argue how the kimono became of outstanding importance during Japan's rise as a world power and its ambitions for imperial expansion across Asia. Furthermore it will be explained how female workforce changed the Japanese society and department stores became cultural hubs of modernisations. In a second chapter, the influence of the kimono on Western fashion will be explored. The kimono became more of particular interest to those with idealistic social views, as it helped to challenge the gendered division between the private and public spheres. Finally, I will argue that the idealisation of the geisha serves to reinforce the exotic cliché of the modest and obedient woman, reproducing an objectified image.

2012

The original meaning of the word ‘kimono’ is ‘clothing’, although today it is often translated as ‘something to wear’. In modern-day Japan the term also often refers to traditional Japanese clothing in general. Although the history of Japanese clothing prior to the Nara period (710–94) is not known in great detail, during the Heian period (794–1185) there are records that describe the clothing of the day. Here we find evidence of the origin of the contemporary kimono in the kosode, which was originally worn by the aristocracy as an undergarment. The kosode is a garment with a body, sleeves and a pair of collars that drape from both shoulders and cross over each other in front of the chest. Kosode means ‘small cuffs’;1 another type of clothing worn prior to the kosode had a larger cuff opening – as wide as the length of the sleeves – and was called osode (see Figures 8.1, 8.2). Clothes for the nobility during the Heian period had smaller cuffed openings in order to keep the body warm...

Museum Anthropology Review, 2008

Clothing Cultures

Review of: The Social Life of Kimono: Japanese Fashion Past and Present, Sheila Cliffe (2017)London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 249 pp.,ISBN 978-1-47258-553-0, h/bk, £79.20

Fashion Theory, 2019

2020

KIMONO Shifting Styles The invaluable contribution of Japanese art and design to the development of modern painting in Britain, Europe and America has been widely acknowledged. Histories of art have predominantly focused on how Japanese prints served as a catalyst in the development of modernism, particularly with regard to the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Movements.1 Yet it is important to remember that, following the opening up of Japan to the wider world, the country’s lacquerware, ceramics, metalwork, enamels, textiles and dress also captured the critical attention and imagination of designers, artists and collectors. Despite their frequent pictorial representation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Japanese kimono are rarely discussed in relation to either their formal influence on, or significance in, paintings. Nor is much consideration given to what these works reveal about the women who chose to wear these garments. Following the enthusiastic respon...

New Voices 7, 2015

Kimono are not considered suitable for contemporary life in Japan—it is difficult to even ride a bicycle while wearing a kimono. Because of this there is a pervading view that the Japanese traditional textile industry is in decline. However, Japanese designers and consumers are redefining Japanese clothing while retaining its "traditional" image. This project investigates how the reinvention of Japanese clothing embodies the process by which tradition and modernity interact with each other and helps us understand how these new designs represent a vehicle for designers’ and consumers’ expressions of Japanese culture.

Theatre Research International, 2018

In June 2015, a small strange protest erupted in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, around a sumptuous red kimono, provided to visitors to try on and emulate the 1876 painting La Japonaise, by Claude Monet. Protesters named themselves Decolonize Our Museums and took to the gallery and social media with strident messages condemning the Kimono Wednesdays try-on activity as racist, orientalist appropriation; soon after, counterprotesters faced off, defending the programme for sharing Japanese culture with the community. In this article, I consider the kimono protests as part of a history of kimono, internationally created yet indelibly marked as Japanese. In this context, the kimono protests provide an occasion to consider the ramifications of contemporary debates about cultural appropriation and appreciation. Through a performance-theory inflected analysis I propose a theatrical ethic of ‘inappropriation’ as a means of moving discourse and public performances of culture beyond the stulti...

2020