Wasarasa Chintz

Printed cotton chintz originated in India, a country with advanced cotton dyeing techniques and a cotton cultivation tradition dating back to the time of the Indus civilization (2600 BCE–1800 BCE). Trade in patterned chintzes with rich patterns in red and other colors spread from the middle of the 15th century, as Europeans advanced into Africa, Asia, and America with the dawn of the Age of Discovery. At that time, cotton was unknown in Europe and Japan. People were thus fascinated by the exotic and vibrantly colored motifs of these printed textiles, as well as the durability, lightness, and softness of their cotton fabrics. In Edo period (1615–1868) Japan, chintzes were prized by the daimyo lords and other members of the samurai class, who were the arbiters of taste, and by sophisticated townspeople.

In the Edo period, important areas for the production of wasarasa included Kyoto, Sakai, Nagasaki, and Nabeshima. Relevant techniques can be divided into the three areas: hand-drawn patterning, stencil (katagami) dyeing, and the combined use of katagami and woodblocks. The most laborious of these is hand-drawn patterning, which has fallen into disuse. Today, apart from Nabeshima wasarasa, which uses a combination of stencils and woodblocks, most contemporary wasarasa textiles with various designs are produced using katagami. Before the advent of wasarasa chintzes, Japanese stencil dyeing was essentially single-color dyeing, done with only one or two katagami stencils. In order to create complex wasarasa patterns with katagami, a layered dyeing technique was developed using any number of stencils.

At first, wasarasa often involved just copying patterns from Indian printed chintzes, but as time went by there was a move toward the development of patterns unique to Japan. Imported sarasa chintzes in the Edo period had the advantage of being color-fast when washed, but it was hard for Japanese people to work out the techniques behind this by merely looking at the cloth. They thus adapted familiar techniques to enable dyeing with pigments. Pigments, however, fade when washed and, as a result, wasarasa was mainly used in applications where washing was not required, such as futons, traditional jackets, furoshiki (Japanese wrapping cloth), and bags.

Because modern wasarasa uses mainly synthetic dyes, there is no longer the same concern about fading after washing as there was with the Edo period chintzes. However, multicolored textiles still require multiple stencils (katagami). The young craftsman Nakano Shiro has taken on these traditional techniques for dyeing wasarasa with Ise katagami, while taking full account of how color is used today.

With Edo komon, Nagaita chugata and other stencil-dyed fabrics done with one color, there is typically a register mark through to the design to confirm that there is no mismatch between each stencil placement. For wasarasa, a complementary register mark is also needed to avoid mismatches in subsequent layers of dye.

The very fact that over 10 katagami are used to dye one pattern makes wasarasa production extremely time consuming. Nowadays, when so many textiles are printed using silkscreen techniques or simple ink-jet printing, the process of communicating the intrinsic value of wasarasa requires consideration of many factors, including choice of production site, ideas about color, and applications. The wasarasa artist Nakano Shiro, while honing his own dyeing techniques, is studying stencil cutting under the master Ise katagami craftsman Isao Uchida, and is making every effort to communicate the value of wasarasa to future generations.