Dōbuku Coat with Paulownias and Arrow

Popular among the daimyo of the Warring States period, the dōbuku was a soft coat worn over other garments and is the precursor of the modern haori. The stylish design of this piece follows a “shoulder-hem” layout, having a purple band with ragged edge across the shoulders and a green band with arrow pattern along the bottom, but leaving the midriff as white space enhanced by the glossy beauty of the silk and scattered with paulownia motifs in green, purple, and light blue. This dōbuku has been passed down in the Nanbu family as a gift that Nanbu Nobunao received from the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) in 1590 (Tenshō 18) for delivering goods to the field during the Battle of Odawara.
The entire piece is done in stitch-and-bind shibori, without any hand drawing or embroidery. To achieve the clear outlines in the design, tiny stitches outlining each motif were pulled tight, and the parts to be dyed dipped repeatedly into the several color baths, a technique requiring much time and great skill. Recently scholars have defined this art “tsujigahana,” but medieval documents generally use the term tsujigahana to refer to bast-fiber garments, rather than silk, and scholars are unsure whether those textiles were dyed with shibori techniques or not.