Traditional craft
Honba Oshima Tsumugi
本場大島紬
A light, crease-resistant silk from Amami Oshima and Kagoshima, dyed in plant tannin and mud, with ikat so fine that one bolt can take up to a year.
Key facts
- Officially recognised
- 17 February 1975
- Type
- Woven textiles
- Region
- Kyushu & Okinawa
- Official name in Japanese
- 本場大島紬
- Official area (in Japanese)
- 鹿児島県／奄美市、鹿児島市、大島郡竜郷町、喜界町、宮崎県／都城市他
Silk dyed in mud
Oshima Tsumugi is famous for its delicate, vivid ikat and for dorozome, mud dyeing. Threads are dyed with sharinbai, a local shrub, and then in iron-rich mud, giving a deep, subdued colour. The cloth is supple, light and hard to crease. It is made on Amami Oshima and in Kagoshima city in Kagoshima, and in Miyakonojo in Miyazaki.
Woven twice
The pattern is first worked out from the design, then threads are bound tight on a special shimebata loom so the binding resists dye. After dyeing in sharinbai and mud, the binding is undone and the real weaving begins. The whole process takes from about six months to a year.
Ikat from the south
Weaving on Amami goes back to around the 7th century, and the production area formed in the early 18th century before the technique spread to Kagoshima. Its roots are said to lie in Indian ikat, which spread through Sumatra, Java and the Sunda Islands before reaching Amami.
Good to know
- Look at the back of the cloth: in true ikat the pattern shows on both sides, because it was dyed into the thread before weaving.
- Even small Oshima Tsumugi items are pricey, so buy from shops in the production area or specialist kimono shops that can tell you who made it.
Questions travellers ask
What is dorozome?
Mud dyeing: threads dyed with tannin from the sharinbai shrub are soaked in iron-rich mud, which turns them a deep, soft black-brown.
Why does Oshima Tsumugi take so long to make?
The ikat threads are bound on a loom before dyeing, dyed many times in plant tannin and mud, then unbound and woven, which takes about six months to a year.
Where it comes from
More crafts from the same area
Local foods from the same area
Heritage stories from the same area
Sources
We checked the facts on this page against these sources.