Make sure they love you when you marry, and that they make it into something wonderful.
This cloth is exactly like sending your own daughter-in-law. I weave with that in mind.
These are the words of a weaver. In Enshu cotton pongee, craftsmen take pride in each step of the process to complete a piece of cloth, preserving traditions and repeating careful manual work using traditional methods.
The nostalgic warmth of the texture is nurtured by human hands. Cotton threads, the raw material for cotton shafts, are wound into a bundle called a "kase," which is made by winding threads of a certain length and bundling them together. A large number of yarns are wound at once, with manual care taken to ensure that they are wound neatly.
The yarn is bleached (refined) and then dyed in the specified color.
By washing the yarn in boiling water, plant oils and scum are removed, making it easier for the color to penetrate the yarn. In the kettle, boiling water with dissolved dye is poured over the yarn to dye it.
Glue is soaked into the threads to reduce fluffiness and make the cloth easier to weave. This process prevents the threads from breaking due to the friction of weaving.
While the glue is still warm, it is dipped into the yarn in proportion to the amount of yarn, and after the glue is evenly and thoroughly absorbed, the yarn is slightly raised and adjusted.
The bundle of threads is then rewound into a spool. After dyeing and gluing are completed, the "kare-yarn" is wound up and made into an "imodashi". The threads are wound up, keeping a close eye on them to make sure they do not tangle or break.
Line up the warp threads so that they form a striped pattern. There are many combinations of stripes in terms of the number of threads and colors, and the order in which they are arranged determines the stripe pattern.
To prevent the stripes from falling apart, the threads are threaded through the comb-like holes called "osasashi" one by one in the order they are laid out. After the osashiri is completed, all the threads are wound up at once. The warp threads are placed on the "hata" (loom) and woven. The weaving process is carried out slowly on a single loom, weaving approximately 3 to 5 skeins per day. Enshu cotton pongee is made through these processes.
In the Enshu area (Hamamatsu City) of Shizuoka Prefecture, where Enshu cotton pongee is produced, weaving is said to have started as a winter job for farmers in the Edo period.
Weaving involves various processes, such as turning cotton into threads and dyeing, and it is said that each person was in charge of his or her own specialty, which led to the division of labor.
Blessed with a mild climate and abundant nature, the Enshu region was ideal for cotton production and prospered as one of the three major cotton-producing regions, along with Mikawa and Senshu.
Please consider commemorative gifts using“Enshu Cotton Pongee”.
We accept a variety of requests,
including letterhead sets and Japanese paper accessories,
as well as items such as the souvenir example.
When did Enshu cotton pongee originate?
Cotton production spread throughout Japan from the middle of the Edo period (1603-1868) onward. Enshu was known as a high-quality cotton-producing region and a pioneer in the weaving industry in Japan.
In 1845, Masaharu Inoue Kawachimori, lord of the Hamamatsu domain, encouraged weaving as a domestic occupation for domain residents, and this led to the development of a textile called shimamomen, which was unique to this region and developed while making the most of its characteristics.
It was called "Kasai-jima" (meaning "Kasai stripes") because it was traded at the Kasai market, where trade was prosperous at the time.
It is said that the cotton fabrics of the region eventually came to be known collectively as "Enshu-Jima" due to the expansion of the trading market. Let us introduce a woman who is known as the "mother of Enshu textiles.
Her name is Koyama Mie (b. 1821). She learned weaving techniques in the service of a feudal lord's family, hired several workers, and started her own weaving business in Kido-machi, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu City.
She laid the foundation for Enshu cotton textiles to grow into a major industry.
The women who worked there eventually married and spread the weaving technique to other parts of Japan. As the technology spread, some poor quality products began to appear on the market.
Mie therefore created a textile trade association called "Eiryusha" to improve the quality of textiles by providing more comfortable working conditions.
Later, in 1878, Japanese-style spinning (Garabo) invented by Tatsumune Gagumo was introduced from the Mikawa area, and in 1884, Enshu Spinning Company was established in Tenryu Futamata.
In 1894, Sakichi Toyoda invented the Kohabariki Shokki loom, and textile production increased rapidly.
Thus, the Enshu textile industry flourished until the early Showa period (1926-1989), but from the 1970s onward, production gradually declined due to the spread of synthetic fibers and the shift to mass production overseas. However, even after that, craftsmen with unchanged love for their work continued to weave Enshu cotton pongee by increasing the number of patterns and improving the quality of the fabric.
Please consider commemorative gifts using“Enshu Cotton Pongee”.
We accept a variety of requests,
including letterhead sets and Japanese paper accessories,
as well as items such as the souvenir example.