Tokyo Some Komon

A pattern you only see up close

Komon means small pattern, and Tokyo's version is famous for being very small indeed. The fine geometric dots and lines are so dense that the cloth looks plain from a short distance, and it shows its pattern only when you step close. The style is elegant even in a single colour. It is made in Shinjuku, Chiyoda, Setagaya, Toshima, Nerima and other wards of Tokyo.

Hand-carved stencils and resist paste

The stencils are Ise katagami: handmade washi laminated with persimmon tannin, then carved by hand with awls and small knives by skilled carvers.

• White silk is stretched on a long board and the stencil laid on top.
• A spatula spreads resist paste through the stencil.
• The cloth comes off the board and a coloured paste is spread over it to dye the ground.
• It is steamed before the paste dries, to fix the dye.
• Finally it is washed carefully to remove the paste and loose dye.

From samurai uniforms to townsfolk style

Komon goes back to the Muromachi period, but it spread in the Edo period, when dyers in Edo made the formal kamishimo of the daimyo who gathered there from all over Japan. By the mid-Edo period townspeople had taken it up too. Men and women both wore komon in the Edo era, but from the Meiji period it became cloth for women. After Meiji, the clean water of the Kanda River made its banks the main dyeing area.