The custom of wearing concealed beauty

Japanese Embroidery is an ancient and beautiful craft. To master it requires years of study and practice. 1

It can be said that one of the characteristics of Japanese antiques and craftworks is the particularity about little things and the refined passion towards concealed beauty. The appreciation of these two points enables us to step forward into the deep sea of Japanese culture.

In this column, we would like to introduce the 'gaku-ura' (the picture on the inner lining of kimonos), which we believe is the ultimate form of Japanese obsession towards concealed beauty.
We hope our gaku-ura collectors, people who heard this term for the first time or readers who have not been interested in kimono before will find the contents interesting and helpful for your next shopping at chuu.com.

The prohibition on sumptuous clothes and the emergence of Edo dandies

The relatively peaceful Edo period (1600-1868) under the reign of Tokugawa shogunate gave rise to a unique merchant culture centered around large cities. The well off merchants began to spend money and time on leisure and cultural pursuit, even on their everyday clothes and tools. As a natural consequence, expensive sumptuous clothes prevailed.

However, the Tokugawa shogunate feared this rising merchant power and issued an edict that prohibited the wearing of rich clothes several times during the Edo period. These edicts were very detailed. For example, highly embroidered or entirely tie-dyed kimonos were banned, and later the restriction went on to even gorgeous festival dolls and elaborate hair accessories.

It is not hard to imagine that the craftsmen who made these pieces lost a great deal, but the regulations did work in a good way in a sense that it stimulated everybody's fashion consciousness. People's interest in outwards beauty shifted to the concealed aspects, beautifying areas that could not be seen from the outside. 2

the actual clothes: photos that tell the tale

the camera had only recently been invented, and was, in fact, an influence on art and the arts veering from a prettified realism. so we are lucky there are any photos at all of women's fashion from this time.

In 1907, according to Common Threads, A Parade of American Clothing, Anna G. Noyes, who many considered an eccentric, pleaded for a new order of clothing in which women didn't need help getting in and out of clothes, a method of equally distributing the weight of clothes so they would be and feel as natural to the body as skin and bones and an overall design based on the natural curves of the body. She also wanted the right for women to select textile colors best suited to their coloring, to choose fabrics for garments which touched the body that were sanitary and could easily be washed and the elimination of dirty starch; to wear gloves instead of bothersome muffs in the winter, more becoming hats less prone to ridicule, better fitting shoes and the elimination of all jewelry and fur in warm climates which prevented fresh air from penetrating the body.

But most of all she touched upon the very heart of reform by campaigning to eliminate articles of clothing that required unsafe or unhealthy working conditions for workers, a subject many were advocating but went largely ignored by local city officials -- the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City in 1911 would forever be a haunting reminder of those unheeded warnings.

Thus the timing was right for the entrance of the kimono American style - its structure and simplicity embodied an age of new spirit and freedom. Although fashion reform was slow to move until the early 1920s as society makers continued to decree that woman should be corseted, stuffed and layered, the carefree look was making serious inroads. (more)

•pattern • design • color •

Japonisme might have had a limited effect except that it attracted the serious attention of superior artists and critics, including Théophile and Judith Gautier, Edmonde and Jules de Goncourt, José-Maria de Heredia, and Henri de Regnier.

Through them, ukiyo-e permanently altered European conventions of color, perspective, empty space, symmetry, form, composition, and subject matter.

In parti- cular, these artists came to under- stand the appeal of irregularity and to appreciate the Japanese sensibility for the evanescence of nature.

Japanese influence had a major role in inspiring the Impres- sionist movement in France, which caused perhaps the most profound change in the aesthetic of modern Europe.

from
Japan Invents the Future

by Daniel Pipes
Society
March-April 1992

(top left: jean-philippe worth; hearn title page: emil orlik; third from top left: also worth; bottom left: candace wheeler. the rest are unknown, but i could do some research if anyone wants.)