Shinshu Tsumugi

Silk from the land of silkworms

Shinshu, the old name for Nagano, was long called the land of silkworms, and its hills are full of plants used for natural dyes. Shinshu Tsumugi is the name for the hand-woven silks made across the prefecture, in Matsumoto, Ueda, Iida, Okaya and more. Its rarest form, yamamayu tsumugi, is woven entirely from wild silk and is found only here.

Thrown by hand

It is a yarn-dyed plain weave. The warp can be raw silk, wild silk, double-cocoon silk or hand-spun floss; the weft is double-cocoon or hand-spun floss, beaten in with a hand-thrown shuttle. Ikat threads are tied by hand before dyeing.

Revived after the war

It traces back to the ashiginu silk of the Nara period. In the early Edo period Nagano's domains competed to promote silk farming and sent large amounts of tsumugi to Kyoto every year. Production later dwindled, until the prefecture and towns revived it after the war.