This week is Japan Week in Ann Arbor, during which the U of M Center for Japanese Studies sponsors days of free, Japan-related activities, in partnership with the Ann Arbor District Library. Cindy and I had excellent seats for one of Wednesday’s events, a demonstration of kimono wearing. The downtown branch of the library hosted the program in a spacious room with soaring ceilings and tall windows. A screen above the stage showed an aerial view of what seemed almost like a ceremony.
Cindy’s and my exposure to Japanese arts began before the event. A lady a couple chairs down from us was doing intricate, geometric embroidery on a ball about the size of a tennis ball. She told us that both the embroidery and the ball are called temari, and that there is an expectation that you make the ball yourself, too. Temari are highly decorative and mostly presented at New Year’s, as expressions of loyalty and wishes for good luck. When asked, she said she mostly gives the ones she makes to friends as gifts.
Six people from the Japanese Society of Detroit created a beautiful space on the raised stage. They draped two spectacular kimono—which turns out to be the plural form of kimono—on stands perfectly designed to display the splendor of the fabric. The more glorious of the two featured many, many cranes, embroidered by hand in gold thread on royal blue silk. It was stunning.
A manikin dressed in a kimono adorned the right side of the stage. The narrator stood to the left. In the center, in front of the draped kimono, the floor was covered in what looked like thick felt pads of bright red. With the addition of the folks from the JSD, all but one of whom wore kimono, the presentation space looked like an art installation.
A young woman provided the narration, and she was there with both her parents. Her father’s kimono was, of course, different from the women’s version. His was more of a kimono jacket over a shirt and loose pants, all the pieces in dark blue or black. The narrator said that, whereas the women’s kimono hides the curves, the men’s enhances them. It also emphasizes the shoulders; her dad looked like a warrior.
The main event of Wednesday’s program was the demonstration of how to dress someone in a kimono. The woman who had not been wearing a kimono to start with had been wearing, instead, the white, neck-to-ankle garment worn under a kimono. She went to the center of the red-padded area of the stage, and a friend joined her. Sliding a kimono onto the model so that it rested on her shoulders and her arms were in the sleeves was just the beginning.
The whole process took the two women, who knew what they were doing and had everything they needed, took a good fifteen minutes. A not insubstantial time went into arranging the silk so that it sat properly on the body. But what really took time was the belt, the obi. Mom and Dad stretched an obi across the room, so the audience could see how long it was. It was fourteen feet long. As a kimono may take sixteen yards of fabric, the finished outfit is heavy.
The obi wraps around the woman twice and then ties in back in an elaborate knot. All five of the women giving the presentation wore their obi in different style knots. Each style looked beautiful, but elaborate enough for the wearer to need assistance creating it. Each woman had also dressed her hair differently, the common denominator being that the hair needs to “up and tight.” It should be off the neck in back.
My favorite part of the presentation was the questions. “Is there a special walk you use?” one women asked. After some discussion among the women on stage, the answer came back that it is “a physical impossibility” to stride along while wearing a kimono; the constraints of the fabric won’t permit it.
“How do you keep your legs from falling asleep when you kneel like that?” another woman asked. We’d all been marveling at the dresser’s exceedingly graceful and fluid method of kneeling and standing up again while wearing her kimono, in addition to how much kneeling she did. The answer, after further discussion, was “a lifetime of practice.”
Cindy and I really enjoyed watching the women and the man, and learning about their traditional apparel and temari. We also learned that the red, padded area of the stage is called the sacred space. Japan Week is quite the treat.
21 June 2024