Nishijin Woven Textiles

Woven textiles produced in the Nishijin area of Kyoto are known as Nishijin-ori, or Nishijin textiles. They typically feature brilliantly dyed silk interwoven with lavish  gold and silver threads into complex and skilful patterns. In addition to obi (wide sashes worn with kimono) and kimono themselves, Nishijin-ori products include decorations for festival floats and costumes for the Noh theater.

 

The weaving industry in Kyoto is said to have started even before the capital was moved to Kyoto in 794. In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Hata clan and others from the Asian continent brought with them techniques of sericulture and silk weaving. When the capital moved to Kyoto (then called Heian kyō) in 794, the Bureau of Textiles (Oribe no Tsukasa) was in charge of producing luxury fabrics for the court. By the end of Heian period (794–1185) the court-run textile production based on the ritsu-ryō system had declined, but weavers congregated their operations in the area of Kyoto's Ōtoneri-machi (now near Inokuma-dori Shimochōja-machi) and continued to weave kara-aya fabrics based the twill weaving techniques of Song dynasty, China. This is the start of Nishijin textiles as a private industry.

After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Nishijin textile companies lost their shogunal and samurai patrons. Nishijin then took steps towards a more modernized textile production, reaching out to incorporating the leading Western textile technologies. In 1872, Nishijin sent students to study the new technology in Lyon, France. Around ten different types of looms including the French jacquard loom and English flying shuttle loom were imported to Japan. Also the forth Date Yasuke (1813–76) brought back an Austrian jacquard loom and fabric samples to Kyoto. 

The first step in creating a textile is to create design sketches of the weave. In the case of patterned textiles, which comprise most of the textiles woven in Nishijin, the design sketches are then copied onto graph paper to make pattern sketches with scaled indications of the individual warps and wefts. Then the pattern sketches are digitally scanned into pattern data. This used to be done by hand onto punch cards. Now, computers do the processing of patterns and the data is stored on floppy disks. When the punch cards or the floppy disks are configured to a jacquard loom, they manipulate the raising and lowering of the warps so as to create the pattern.

A number of fine silk filaments from cocoons are reeled together to produce prescribed denier (thickness) thread and then given a twist. This twist makes the thread easier to handle and stronger. In this condition, the thread is called “raw silk” (kiito). Next the raw silk is degummed. By removing the colloidal substance known as sericin from the outside of the raw silk, the fibroin is exposed and the silk threads gain the characteristic soft, flossy texture associated with silk. After that the necessary warp and weft threads for the piece are dyed. Fabrics needing a stiffer texture, as for summer wear, often use the raw silk threads as is, without degumming. 

The dyed skeins of thread are wound onto large rectangular bobbins and then the warp and weft threads are prepared. The setting up of the warp involves measuring out the lengths of all the warps, their number being based on their density per centimeter times the width of the fabric, and then winding them onto a cylindrical warp beam (chikiri). When the pattern or color of the warp is changed, a new warp beam is set in place and the new warps knotted to the old warps. The wefts of set thickness are wound onto thin shuttle quills. For magnificently patterned textiles dozens of colored threads must be prepared. 

People tend to think of weaving as a two-dimensional process, but textiles with patterned weaves use various different twists and thicknesses of warp and weft to create complex three-dimensional structures. Heddles (sōkō) are used to raise and lower the warp threads according to the pattern fed into the jacquard punch cards or the data on the floppy disk. Different heddle tie-ups are necessary for each of the basic weave structures – plain weave, twill weave, satin weave, and gauze weave—and, in Nishijin, this preparation is done by in heddle tie-up specialists. 

The majority of weave structures are based on parallel warps intersecting with wefts at right angles. For gauze weaves (mojiri ori) the warps are shifted so they cross each other. The crossed warps create spaces between the weft shots, resulting in a more diaphanous fabric. Gauze weave textiles might be woven in plain gauze weave (sha), ribbed gauze weave (ro), or complex gauze weave (ra) and are generally used for summer garments. The weft is woven in wet to compress it, and create a crisp, gossamer textile.