Folklorist Kunio Yanagita long ago said that "clothing is the most direct indication of a people's general frame of mind." If this is so, what then is one to make of the kimono?
It comes in module units, like tatami, and this implies a certain interchangeability, not only among the kimono but also among the wearers. Also it is structurally unisexual. A member of the 1852 Russian Japan Expedition wrote that upon hearing the swish of skirts "you look up and are disappointed." I do not know what that implies.
One may also find the kimono egalitarian. Several early travelers have, stating that everyone in Japan dressed the same, from the emperor on down. They failed, however, to notice the amount of social statement contained in the kimono itself -- the fabric, the color, the sleeve length. Unmarried women were allowed the "swinging sleeve," ("furisode") but these were dramatically shortened into the "tomesode" once a person married. Also, men's sleeves are sewn up the back. And all of this determined by law.
The kimono can thus be seen as the Tokugawa-period uniform. And uniforms, as critic Shunsuke Tsurumi has noted, "make it easier for a person in authority to control the people under him." This kimono-uniform can then also be seen as punishing.
Empress Shoken, consort of Emperor Meiji, proclaimed that the wide obi was "unsuited to the human body." And Yanagita may have agreed, though he went on to compare it favorably with two other well-known ways of torment -- the Western whalebone corset and Chinese foot-binding.
A conclusion drawn by Bernard Rudofsky in "The Kimono Mind" is that the obi-kimono combination "would indeed seem a senselessly vicious construction were it not for the extenuating fact that men derive infinite pleasure from watching hobbled women."
Little of the information above comes from the book under review here because this handsome volume is a celebration rather than a condemnation of the kimono. That it is a kind of livery is, in fact, commemorated. "For the Japanese, a uniform is a passport to happiness," writes the author. "It is a basic element in people's lives and being identified as belonging to a group is of the utmost importance."
Whether this is actually true of "the" Japanese in a country where one finds as much variety as uniformity, it is a commonly held assumption. If this is true, however, one then wonders why the kimono was given up (for so it has been) since it was a group-indicator of choice.
Whatever the reasons, discomfort was not one. Being comfortable has never been a fashion consideration -- witness the number of the young wobbling about on stilt sandals last season. And Liza Dalby (who has herself written a book on the kimono) says that it isn't really all that uncomfortable anyway. Wearing it actually improves the stature and she has been told that one can really eat more (rather than less) when tightly bound.
Fashion photographer Paul van Riel writes that he saw in the kimono a way to make a photographic statement about Japan and, indeed, the pictures are very pretty. To go along with them Dalby wrote her introduction and the author of "Memoirs of a Geisha" was pressed for a quote: "A sumptuous view of modern kimono."
In the general celebration, Yanagita's comment that a people's frame of mind is to be glimpsed in the choice of clothing goes unanswered. But this is only because it goes unheard. Kimono has no real contemporary relevance. It is thus an ideal choice for the celebration of retro-chic.
To answer the folklorist's query one would have to do a book on jeans and their fashionable gradations (from stone-rubbed to old to -- best of all -- used), and why all T-shirts are of the same module shape yet each carries a different message.
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