Echigo Jōfu

Echigo jōfu is a hand-woven Japanese textile woven in the mountain-lined valley of Minamiuonuma, in Niigata prefecture. The geographical location of Minamiuonuma between mountains running along the Sea of Japan to the west and the Japanese Alps to the east gives the entire region a unique climate. The summers are hot and muggy, but the long winters—though relatively mild in temperature—are extremely humid, often accumulating two to three meters of snow at a time. The melted snow insures an abundance of water that makes this the most famous region in Japan for rice—especially the koshihikari variety, considered to be the best in the country—and also for excellent sake.

Echigo jōfu is made from ramie (Boehmeria nivea), a bast fiber similar to flax (the source for linen) and hemp. Bast fibers are long vegetable fibers taken from the inner ski or bark of plants or trees. A member of the nettle family, ramie grows as a perennial. It is distinguished by its fine, white fibers, which have pliability and strength. The ramie used for Echigo jōfu has for hundreds of years been grown in an area known today as Showa Village, in neighboring Fukushima prefecture. The geographic environment and the special cultivation techniques used in that region made it perfectly suited to ramie production. 

The snowy humid winters of Echigo were ideally suited to weaving this delicate fiber. Dealers would carry the raw material of dried ramie fibers over the mountains from Aizu (including present day Showa Village, Fukushima) to Echigo (including present day Minamiuonuma, Uonuma, Ojiya, Tokamachi, and other regions) where they would be plied into thread by women often living in mountainous villages. Other women then wove this thread into cloth. The finished cloth would then be washed and bleached on the snow.

To make thread from ramie (a process called oumi, literally, “giving birth to ramie”), the thread maker divides the dried fibers into smaller bundles and then with her fingers splits one thick strand of fiber into numerous hair-like strands. She then joins these strands together end-to-end into one long thread, which she feeds into a special thread bucket called an oboke. 

The accumulated thread in the oboke thread bucket must be given an overall twist in order to be useable Twisting helps smooth down the loose ends coming off the plied joints, incorporating them into the length of the thread. In premodern Japan, this twisting step was done by hand, originally with a spindle and later a spinning wheel, but since the postwar period, it has mostly been done with a custom made twisting machine. 

Intricate patterns made with warp and weft ikat (kasuri) are another distinguishing characteristic of Echigo jofu.

 

The finer the pattern, the more difficult it is to weave. Each tiny pattern point on the warp much intersect with its corresponding pattern in the weft. Even one thread out of alignment can can cause a glaring flaw in the textile. 

When skillfully done, the tie-resist pattern sections remain cleanly delineated from the background. One downside of dyeing is the wear and tear it causes on the delicate threads, leading to numerous tiny snags in the fibers. These snags will be detangled and smoothed down during the many thread processing steps to follow, each of which is performed on one thread at a time.

The newly wound spool of thread is next rewound carefully into a skein. This time, the thread runs through a pan of warm seaweed paste (funori), which serves to smooth down all remaining snags and uneven areas. Here too, the processing is done end to end over a single thread, and numerous repairs are made along the way.

After winding the thread once more onto spools, it is time for warping. Each bolt of Echigo jōfu is wound separately to the twelve meter length needed for one kimono. The warp is wound two threads at a time. To prevent tangling and unnecessary handling, the delicate ramie threads are run through two long bamboo tubes, which are used like chopsticks at one end to make the cross. This warp is then chained off the warping board.

The harness used for this delicate thread is made from string heddles wound on a dowel. The string is much less abrasive than steel, minimizing breakage to the fragile threads. This harness is made from scratch for each bolt of Echigo jōfu by two artisans. One of them hands off alternating threads, and the other catches the threads up into string heddles. 

After the weaver straps herself into the loom, she tries to remain there for as long as possible to avoid irregularities in the woven surface, so she keeps everything she might need close at hand. She uses a separate sword-shaped shuttle for each type of weft thread in a pattern. A small chamber in the center of each shuttle holds a small bamboo quill upon which the weft is wound. Other implements she uses are a small sponge on a stick for dampening the threads, pins, and scissors.

After the completed bolt of Echigo jōfu is taken off the loom, it is washed with the feet in a wooden boat-shaped basin. This process helps to clean and soften the textile, removing the paste (nori) applied to the threads before and sometimes during weaving.

One of the iconic scenes of late winter in Minamiuonuma is the bleaching of ramie textiles on the snow. In late February and March, the days become sunny, while at least a meter of snow still remains on the ground. The washed textiles are laid out on the snowy rice paddies for several days at a time (taken in each night). The combination of the bright sunshine above and the melting snow below creates a natural reaction that bleaches or brightens the textiles while softening and integrating the woven fibers.

Not all the bleaching bolts of cloth are new. Stained, tired, decades-old Echigo jōfu kimonos can be revitalized through a process called satogaeri (return to the home village), in which they are sent back to the snow country, dismantled, basted back into twelve-meter lengths of cloth, and snow bleached.