Well, my new year's resolutions were blown on the first weeks, HA! Must be a record even for me. But seriously, school/work has been hell lately and I've been busy as a beaver for the last two weeks. Last week we had the first of our two big tests and everybody was cranky/stressed and some didn't show up at school, which meant more work for those who did as we had to patch up. Long story short, I passed the test but I'm not waiting eagerly to the next one in the spring.
But something kimono related, I bought a charming little book called The History of Women's costume in Japan and it arrived last week to cheer me up. The book is in japanese.
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| The Cover |
It's a pocketbook size book with 255 pages of goodyness. With
Costume Museum's help I identified the first chapter to be (possibly) the Ancient Burial Mounds era or Ancient tomb culture.
It was interesting to flip through these first pages as the clothes resemble (atleast to me) very much of the Korean hanbok. The belt is also quite wide compaired to the later centuries until the obi starts it's rise in the Edo period. Also, everyone who has gotten any information about kimono, will know that the kimono collars go left-over-right, but in these early pictures right-over-left seems dominant. The next chapter shows that both styles were in use, but the left-over-right is starting to be dominant.
During this chapter the chinese influence is more visible than Korean, but this was the time that the japanese fancied the chinese court and modelled their own fashion according to the chinese. When the Heian period is rolled in, the left-over-right is the only dominant way to put the collars on a living thing.
The other interesting feature I didn't realize until I was near the end of the book. Soemwhere along the Edo period my eyes caught this very fanciful design on the kimono and it took me a while to realize that it was the family crest as the same pattern was repeated 5 times on the places where the mon's are located.
Pretty isn't it? There was a few other similar mon design. I flipped back and forth in the book trying to find mon's on the earlier periods to see what kind of design they had. But couldn't find any. I also noticed the more "normal" geometric mon designs during the Edo chapter, but these decorative mon's really sparked my interest.
I have to keep a lookout for a book on men's kimono history so I can compare and see when did the mon's appear on male garments.
As always, better scan's are in my flickr page.
I did not scan the whole 255 pages of the book! Just a few selected bits and pieces!
To Flickr:
The History of Women's Costume in Japan
