Core Kyoto.

This kimono expressing subtle gradations is generated by weaving threads one at a time, each with a unique hue.

The silk thread spun for use in kimono is dyed with pigments extracted from plants.

This traditional technique has been handed down for generations.

Shimura Shouji is involved in all stages of the process, from thread dyeing to weaving and creation of final products.

He creates kimono as well as stoles, business card holders, and other items used in daily life.

Each time I dye thread the result is different.
I may call it orange, maybe red.

It’s impossible to assign names,
as each hue is one-in-a-million.

The gradation of subtle hues in this colorful flower arrangement exudes a mellow, soothing ambience.

Urasawa Mina creates therapeutic color schemes with her bouquets.

Her arrangements are characterized by gentle tones created through the combination of neutral colors, accentuated by traditional Japanese blossoms to blend into the Kyoto landscape.

The colors of the sky, or a temple,
or a kimono – these are the colors of Kyoto
I always saw as a child.

I try to express
each one in my arrangements.

The two artists use plants in diverse ways to recreate the colors of Kyoto.

Both approaches achieve works with understated color gradation.

Core Kyoto pursues the roots of Kyoto's beauty through discussions on color within the city's history and landscape.

Textile producer Shimura Shouji visits florist Urasawa Mina at her atelier in the city center.

"Konnichiwa."

"Konnichiwa."

"Shimura desu. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

"Yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

Wow. Your atelier is so spacious.

You think so? Well, I teach lessons here as well, so I need space for all the tables and chairs, you know.

So, this is one of your creations.

Yes, it is.

The gradation in it is amazing.

Thank you. I use a wide variety of flowers to create the gradation.

I notice you use roses of various colors, not just one.

That’s right.

Recently it has become quite easy to procure nearly any flower I want.

But we work with what we can get, so we florists tend to rely fully on the power of the blossoms.

Urasawa's arrangements are based on what is referred to as "Paris style," in which flowers are arranged to create a dense surface of blossoms.

To this, she has integrated a sense of color unique to Kyoto.

Your style is different than the Paris style.

The form is the same, with lots of flowers tightly arranged, and the colors are similarly emphasized.

But the biggest difference is the vivid color scheme you find in French arrangements.

For example, you’ll find color combinations with real pizzazz, like rich magenta and deep purple.

They are truly beautiful, but when I tried to introduce flowers with a French flair in Kyoto, it just didn’t seem to fit.

It didn’t look quite right.

The Paris-style arrangements didn’t blend in well with the cityscape and lifestyle of Kyoto, nor the sensibilities of Kyotoites.

So I decided to add a bit of gradation, creating a more delicate color combination.

I realized that, although the shape stays the same, adjusting the blend of hues helped the arrangements take on a Kyoto style.

Another key characteristic of Urasawa's creations is her use of traditional Japanese flowers.

Today, she adds the spotted bellflower.

I wouldn’t expect to find that flower in an arrangement of roses.

It helps me add a bit of seasonality.

I know it is a little unassuming compared to the Western flowers here, but it has a very delicate beauty.

Adding flowers like this brings a beautiful balance to the overall effect, so I often stick in a few blossoms as the finishing touch.

Urasawa employs chic colors with a few domestic blossoms, for a gorgeous yet subdued result.

Her arrangements have a soothing quality loved throughout Japan.

Some 400 students flock to Urasawa's atelier each month for lessons, eager to learn her technique and color sensibilities.

As her talent gained further recognition, she was put in charge of the floral decorations for the G20 Osaka Summit held in 2019.

In the pastoral landscape of Sagano, northwest of downtown Kyoto, Shimura Shouji creates woven fabrics with an emphasis on color.

Today, he has invited Urasawa to visit his workshop.

Producing kimono, stoles, and other textile items, Shimura insists on hand-weaving with threads tinted using plant-based dyes.

Oh, it has such a gentle feel to it, and it’s filled with so many colors.

Earlier, we talked about neutral colors in flowers.

With kimono too, there are so many intermediary colors, and you can never get the same shade twice.

It’s almost like an endless gradation, and each and every thread has a slightly different hue.

Of course, that’s what makes it so interesting—the way it turns into a complicated design.

Yeah. There are so many different threads and the harmony that these individual threads create is amazing.

And this gradation over here is so beautiful.

Thank you. These are hand-woven stoles.

If you look closely, you’ll notice the really fine gradation.

It’s so intricate.

There is no way to calculate this fine level of feathered gradation in a single color; it’s something that can’t be designed.

Each weaver comes with their own set of imagined landscapes, their own sensibilities.

Such landscapes, abstract or natural, buried deep in our minds somehow seep into and influence the way we use colors and how the patterns emerge.

Shimura shows Urasawa his thread-dyeing process.

Here, he is using dye extracted from safflower petals.

"Onegai shimasu."

Oh.

The thread takes on color, right from the start.

Oh wow.

It becomes an entirely different color.

Instantaneous.

Absolutely.

This process is repeated three times, the thread becoming brighter and deeper with each dip.

Oh, what a beautiful color.

It really is...

Just beautiful. Wow.

We get this color dyeing with safflower today, but if we repeat the process tomorrow, we won’t get the same shade.

I see.

The difference largely depends on the water, or when the safflowers were picked.

Someone using the same dye right next to me will get different shades.

Really?

Yes. Every little difference matters.

It depends on the person dyeing the thread, how long the thread is in the dye, even slight variances in timing.

When you think about it, it is like a once-in-a-life-time meeting between the dyer and the plants themselves.

It’s ... it’s a mutual interaction.

Yes, definitely.

Dyeing threads with extract from stems, roots, and seeds also produces vivid and varied colors.

Shimura expertly combines these naturally dyed threads to create beautiful, woven textiles.

Urasawa was born and raised in Nishijin, Kyoto's textile district.

Although flowers had no particular role in her upbringing, during her 20s, she decided to become a florist.

I wanted to find a job that I could do for the rest of my life, something that would help me pursue my own self-improvement.

I wanted something I could dedicate my whole life to.

So, I was always looking at Western fashion magazines.

Once, I was looking at the Paris Collection and saw a flower arrangement in the photo that was so wonderfully colorful it blew me away.

At that moment, it almost felt like zap! I was hit by lightning.

Overwhelming. And that was how it started.

After learning the basics at a vocational school in Kyoto, Urawasa began training at a local florist.

At that time, the focus was on traditional ikebana rather than Western-style flower arrangements.

What kind of work did you have to do at the flower shop?

First, menial tasks.

Since our shop mainly handled ikebana, we would go to various long-established places in Gion and Pontochou to arrange flowers.

I would follow along as an assistant to the more senior staff, and I would basically watch them create ikebana.

Honestly, my training consisted of watching and learning, the old-fashioned way.

That’s the way you learned back then.

Do you feel like that experience is linked to the way you work now?

Oh, definitely.

In particular, I was able to discover a wide range of flowers native to Japan.

And, through that experience I learned about the beauty of Japanese flowers as well as "the spirit of wa" or harmony they embodied.

Urasawa could not forget the allure of Paris-style arrangements, so from the age of 26, she made several trips to France to learn directly from top florists there.

So, in France, primary colors were matched with other primary colors.

Deep colors are matched with other deep colors; bright colors with even brighter colors.

The color combinations were really punchy. And in Paris, they looked so chic.

I suppose when you brought the style back, it didn’t quite fit.

Exactly.

After returning to Kyoto, I visited florist after florist, recreating what I’d seen in Paris.

But when I made these arrangements in Kyoto, they didn’t look good at all.

Un.

I’d compare them to photos I’d taken in Paris, and they were exactly what I’d seen there,

so I began to wonder why the same colors lose their impact, here.

That’s a really interesting point.

The same creative work looks totally different depending on the surroundings.

Yes. It was a real shock!

Especially after, going all the way to Paris and all.

After coming to the conclusion that the colorful, Paris-style did not blend well with Kyoto's surroundings, Urasawa found her own style of chic gradations

integrating neutral colors and traditional Japanese flowers.

Shimura was born to a family of dyers and weavers.

His grandmother, Fukumi, is a designated Living National Treasure in recognition of her achievements as a weaver.

She is an authority on dyeing silk thread with pigments extracted by boiling plants.

His mother, Youko, together with Fukumi, helped to popularize the ancient method of plant-based dyeing.

The family insists that everything be done manually, from dyeing the threads to weaving, through to completion.

Only items created by hand have that one-of-a-kind feel.

Natural materials like silk thread and plant dyes generate rustic tones, giving items depth.

Shimura nurtured his artistic sensibility under the influence of his mother and grandmother.

Growing up in a family like yours, did that sort of environment naturally make you want to become a textile artist?

No, not at all.

In fact, in university, I studied something completely different –philosophy and ideology.

I was really interested in education.

I wanted to create a space geared for education, so I started a tutoring school.

For years I taught children in my own cram school.

Is that right?

In 2011, Shimura came to a turning point and decided on a new path.

I guess the real turning point was the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Mmmm.

I started worrying about the future of Japan’s nature and civilization.

For a while I had felt a true sense of crisis.

At that time, I wanted to create an open space for everyone.

That is when I came up with the idea of making a place for learning through textile dyeing and weaving.

So establishing this school became the momentum that set you on the path toward textiles.

Yes, it was a decisive opportunity for me.

Oh, I see.

Inside me, education and textiles merged.

Boom.

Right.

The textile school was established in 2013.

Currently, it has some 50 students learning dyeing and weaving techniques.

As instructor, Shimura carries on his family's legacy, teaching students how to interact with nature through plant-based dyeing.

Actually, I’m wondering why you chose the path of producer, rather than artist?

I guess the biggest reason is that I wanted to create a space where people gather.

I wanted to create a space where people can learn through dyeing and weaving.

The feeling of finding your own emotional joy or personal growth through experience is amazing.

So I think coming to this place to learn brings happiness to many students.

That said, creating everything by hand is not easy to sustain in this rather tough environment.

As natural dyers, we have a hard time procuring enough plants to create the dyes, due to the lack of resources and suppliers of natural materials.

Mmmm.I see.

In fact, there are fewer and fewer producers of silk thread.

So it is just as important to establish an environment for dyeing and weaving textiles.

As part of his efforts, Shimura runs shops in Kyoto and Tokyo that sell items created in his workshop.

By making it easier to obtain his products, he hopes more people will become aware of the colors and techniques his family utilizes.

I wanna communicate the ideology and allure of the kind of dyeing and weaving we do, especially to younger generations.

Right.

I wonder how young people in their 20s and 30s feel about the culture surrounding textiles, or even about kimono itself.

I really feel that we have to change how we communicate when presenting all this culture in a way that fits the times.

Very true.

Urasawa's floral arrangements comprise neutral colors creating pastel gradations that blend smoothly into the Kyoto landscape.

The fact that she was born and bred in Kyoto greatly influenced the development of her style.

Of course, there were temples all around us in the neighborhood.

When we went out to play, it was to the temple grounds.

So my surroundings were basically brown and white, the colors of plastered walls, and the gradation of greenery all around.

Urasawa likes to sometimes visit neighboring temples and shrines, where she discovers new color combinations among the structures etched with history.

She finds inspiration from the greenery she encounters while feeling the Kyoto breezes as she walks through nature-filled spots.

She also gleaned much about colors unique to Kyoto through the kimono she saw from a young age, growing up in Kyoto's textile district.

Basically, kimono were all around me... kimono and obi.

And textiles were everywhere I looked as well.

"Konichiwa," I would call out to the weavers, then dash into the workshop where there would be bolts of kimono fabric everywhere.

Then the weaver would say, "Come, come, look at this. I just finished a really nice one. You need to see this pretty one!"

And I always thought they were so beautiful.

I think the memories of my childhood and all the visuals I took in are still very much inside me.

So, when I am creating an arrangement, kimono color schemes are there in my consciousness,

and I apply them to the combination of hues I put together.

I really love kimono, actually.

And that is probably where I get a lot of my ideas.

Shimura's family specializes in a kind of feathered gradation.

Their expressive method of weaving various colors of threads evolved from Kyoto's climate.

Gradation was not originally a fundamental feature in the world of kimono.

It all goes back to my grandmother, when she moved to the Sagano area of Kyoto.

Walking through the natural settings of Sagano, she would often gaze at the morning mist as it rose before her.

That hazy scene and that feeling had a great impact on her.

So gradually those scenes of nature in Sagano began to appear as patterns and designs in her creations, expressed through feathered gradations.

Of course, these are all colors of Kyoto as well.

It’s only natural that dyeing with plants growing in Kyoto results in expression like this.

If they were plants native to Paris, I’m sure the color scheme would be completely different.

In a natural setting like we’re in now, the fact that this blends right into the background is surely because we are in Kyoto.

Mmm. You’re so right.

With the pandemic, demand for flower arrangements and kimono diminished.

Both Urasawa and Shimura have been unavoidably affected and unable to hold their classes.

However, Urasawa started a new endeavor in hopes of encouraging the enjoyment of flowers, especially during this stressful time.

This towel is the result of a collaboration
with an established Kyoto textile firm.

The towels are dyed with images of flowers Urasawa photographed.

Due to the pandemic, we can’t even visit
someone in hospital or take flowers.

But hospitals and other facilities
would surely allow towels as gifts.

Hanging one could do
wonders in lifting spirits.

They can be used in
interior decorating as well.

It’s a lovely way to add more
flowers into daily life.

Shimura also started working on a new collaboration.

"Hai."

"Konnichiwa. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

"Yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

Minakawa Mayumi, also based in Kyoto, creates accessories and decorative items using thread as a key material.

Plants serve as the common motif in her work, yet they only exist in her imagination.

Minakawa plans to make new accessories using the threads and fabric Shimura's workshop makes.

I made a few samples.
For example, this is a brooch.

The petals are made dyed fabric and the silk thread
is wound around for the berries and stems.

Like this?

Yes, the blossom hangs downward.
It’s an earring.

The petals are made of dyed fabric,
and you wear it on just one ear.

-Is it light?
-Yes, it is.

I like the way its colors change
depending on the angle.

This collaboration came to fruition thanks to plants, a shared feature of Shimura's and Minakawa's work.

Normally, we work within
the confines of a traditional craft.

It’s a joy to collaborate with a modern artist
and find new facets of plant-dyed textiles.

I hope this conveys the charms
of plant-based dyeing- as well as the value of
plants as living things.

When using plant-based dyes, you are
in a way accepting the life of that plant.

But the plant does not disappear there.
It lives on as a natural color.

It takes on a new appeal, a new life,
as I return it to a plant shape.

That is really important to me.

Are there colors you want to express in the future?

Actually, yes there are.

When training at the florist, I noticed many people using the phrase "the beauty in rustic simplicity."

I think this term originated in the world of tea.

To me, it’s a ray of light, shining in.

As the light passes through, you suddenly see something wonderful.

I want to express the colors in that special space somehow.

But I doubt there is an easy solution to that puzzle, and it will take a lot of time and effort before that world will open up to me.

So they are probably colors quite unique to Kyoto, right?

Yes. And that is the one thing I really want to see right now.

So, what are you thinking about next when it comes to expressing the colors of Kyoto?

Well, basically, in our work, we extract the pigments hidden inside the plants, and weave thread dyed with those extracts.

So I am very interested in finding the hidden nature of Kyoto.

I mean, there is so much nature that we can see, but plants have internal characteristics.

The intriguing part about dyeing and weaving is that the color you see initially is not the color that you end up with.

I feel like our job as producers of textiles is to express the nature in plants that we cannot see.

Let’s both continue to share the beautiful colors of Kyoto with people.

The shades and hues that plants offer are truly limitless, and I hope we can guide each other in the future.

Thank you for today.

Thank you so much.