Japan and Belgium are ringing in 160 years of friendly ties with a series of celebrations. One event held in the Belgian capital Brussels spotlighted the rich traditional culture of northern Japan’s Tohoku region and the efforts to preserve it as the area continues to rebuild from the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake.
Tohoku tradition thrills Brussels
On June 9, the UNESCO World Heritage site Grand Place in Brussels hosted a modern retelling of an ancient Japanese legend. ‘Amaterasu’ tells the story of the titular Goddess of the Sun. After she retreats into a cave and plunges the world into darkness, Amaterasu must be drawn out through music, dance and celebration.
Merging Japan and Europe: Be-Japon refashions traditional Japanese kimonos and artworks into Haute-Couture dresses.
Presented by Be-Japon, the show featured models dressed in haute couture dresses made from antique Japanese kimonos and crafts. The striking fashion brought audiences back in time to the world of centuries-old Japan. Several of the dresses featured were made from antique kimonos from Tohoku and traditional fabric including Fukushima’s Kawamata silk, cementing the show’s ties to the region.
Show creator and dress designer Eiko Kobayashi creatively revisits Japan’s local traditional culture in her work, with an emphasis on Northern Japan or Tohoku, the area where she is from.
A token of hope
The creator of ‘Amaterasu’ is 75-year-old costume designer and performance artist Kobayashi Eiko. Born in Tohoku, she has been dedicating herself to preserving northern Japan’s folk culture and arts, which have been in danger of disappearing following the devastation of the 2011 disaster.
The works of costume designer Kobayashi Eiko recreate Japan’s traditional beauty.
Her hometown, the coastal part of Watari town in Miyagi Prefecture, was totally swept away by a massive tsunami. Visiting the town soon after the disaster, Kobayashi says she found total despair, but also one token of hope — a century-old formal kimono that belonged to her great-grandmother.
For Kobayashi, the kimono invokes good memories of being together with her family and also the local lifestyle.
Paying tribute to local traditional craftsmanship
Kobayashi’s great-grandmother’s formal kimono was a wedding present to her daughter. It exemplifies Miyagi craftsmanship as it was tailor-made to protect the wearer from the prefecture’s chilly climate.
More than a century ago, Watari used to thrive as a center of sericulture. Kobayashi says every household had their own traditional spinners and loom for making kimonos. She adds it was common for households to grow silkworms.
Kobayashi recalls that as a child at her great-grandmother’s house, “I remember the sounds of silkworms moving upstairs… and the house was kept so warm inside.”
Watari town was a center of sericulture from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.
For her work, Kobayashi was determined to transform her great-grandmother’s kimono into lively fabulous dresses as a symbol of her lost hometown.
In order to make her creations more representative of Miyagi, she came up with the idea of also incorporating local traditional paper with the motif of the area’s pine trees.
Miyagi’s traditional handmade paper Shiroishi Washi is known for its durability and purity. It had been historically renowned as the finest of its kind since the 8th century.
Environmental changes have threatened the traditional craftsmanship needed to create Shiroishi Washi.
An inspiration to Tohoku
Kobayashi’s dedication to reviving and preserving Tohoku’s cultural traditions would not be possible without the support of local communities in the region. Some people have offered their family’s old kimonos so Kobayashi can refashion them into new creations, while others have helped out at her shows.
Local residents say Miyagi’s richness lies in its nature and landscape — and that Kobayashi’s dresses remind them of this.
They add that they are inspired by Kobayashi and her kimono dresses as they not only offer people an occasion to meet for her shows, but also a chance to rediscover new values in their own local traditions and environment. They especially feel proud when Kobayashi shares comments she has received from audiences overseas on her dresses.
A symbol for a town’s revival
One woman who has appeared in Kobayashi’s local shows is her best friend Yoshida Naomi. Like Kobayashi, Yoshida shares a love of their hometown Watari’s nature, calling it a source of cultural inspiration for its residents.
Yoshida says she hopes her hometown can recapture what it was before the disaster so that future generations can enjoy a town filled with liveliness where they can create new memories.
She adds Kobayashi’s dresses are a token of hope for this future.
Back in Japan from Belgium, Kobayashi says she feels her latest show was successful in terms of being able to share the folk culture of Tohoku with people in Brussels. She adds that she will continue her mission of keeping Tohoku culture alive in the minds of people who see her work.
