Japanese Tradition in Isssey Miyake

35 Design Discourse vol.1 no.1 2005 January

Japanese Tradition in Isssey Miyake

Chikako Hiramitsu [email protected] Osaka University Graduate School of Letters

Issey Miyake, a Japanese fashion designer, sets much value on bringing a contemporary interpretation of traditional

Japanese wear, the kimono, to western clothing. Stressing the decoration of the fabrics and creating clothes in harmony with

the feel of them, as well as designing clothes that resonate physically and spiritually with the wearer, these characteristic

elements of his designs are inspired by the kimono. From the point of Orientalism, however, his view of Japanese traditions

is unique to modern Japanese people who have been westernised and mimic the West. He can never be free from being

typified as a 'Japanese designer,’ so the fact that he is Japanese creates the duality of being distinguished from the West

while mimicking it. His final aim to create clothes that are universal achieved in his series of collections with pleats, can also

be seen from the point of such a concept. This study will clarify how he introduced the kimono into western clothing and his

position in the fashion industry.

Keywords: Issey Miyake, fashion design, Japan, tradition

Introduction 'East Meets West'

Issey Miyake entitled his first book of works ‘East Meets West.’ The title was quoted from the poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’ written by Rudyard Kipling, one of the colonialists. In the poem, Kipling stated that the East doesn't meet the West. But they do meet in the works of Miyake. The modern fashion industry has spread across the boundaries of countries and nations, mainly in a few big cities in developed countries. Issey Miyake has received recognition for bringing a modern interpretation of the Japanese kimono to western clothing, in the fashion industry. This study sheds light on the way that the kimono is interpreted and assimilated in Miyake's works with reference to his perspective on western, and eastern or Japanese clothes. Then, his method of producing universal

designs in which ‘the East meets the West’ can be clarified.

1. The East and the West in Miyake

Haute couture as western clothing After graduating from an art college in Japan, Miyake studied at Ecole de la chambre sandica in Paris for a year, and then worked as an assistant for two years in the ateliers of Guy Laroche and Givenchy. From these experiences, Miyake got the idea that haute couture typified western clothing.

In his mind, haute couture dresses are solid structural packages, symbolising overdecorative and heavy western culture. Such western dresses stress body shape through skilled tailoring



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techniques. Miyake questioned this notion of western dresses, doubting not only the forms of the clothes but also their relationship with the wearers. To Miyake, making haute couture dresses is comparable to serving the bourgeoisie and in complete opposition to his sensibilities. Haute couture is intended for high and middle classes, based on the strict distinctions of sex, class, occasion, or purpose. From the 1950s to the ‘60s, haute couture extended its sphere of influence through expanding media such as fashion magazines or movies, but at the end of the ‘60s some signs of decline began to appear. Miyake sympathised with this change in the minds of western people, on the point of general doubts over the trickle-down system in fashion at that time. He found western culture, as well as western clothes, to be incompatible with other clothing. His experiences in haute couture in Paris raised within him the question, ‘Why should the standard be in Europe?’ and from this, he started to release his clothes from the western definition and began to create his own.

‘A piece of cloth’

The Japanese kimono was the starting point of Miyake’s search for his own definition. He designs a garment from within where the human body touches the fabric, as opposed to the western trend of designing from outside the body. In the beginning, he chooses a fabric and checks the way it feels against his own body. He has said that he closes his eyes and allows the fabrics to tell him what to do with them. Then, designs can be created that maintain the superiority of the decorations during dyeing and weaving of the kimono which has few varieties of forms. Miyake visits many fabric producing districts in Japan, where fabrics such as shijira1 fig.1 and tsumugi2 have been

preserved and handed down over generations.fig.2 He also sometimes creates new fabrics in

co-operation with the artisans in these districts.fig.3 The textile designer, Makiko Minagawa,

has been one of his partners from the very beginning. She comes from a family of dyers and weavers that have lived in Kyoto for several generations. Miyake and Minagawa have developed or improved the variety of traditional Japanese materials ranging from simple striped fabrics to some unique materials such as Japanese paper or basyoufu; a fabric made from leaves. Jack Larsen pointed out their Japanese characteristics in the techniques, such as shibori3 or nishiki4, and in the colours without vividness or strong contrasts, and their modern characteristics in using new fabrics, in the technical textile finishing for lustre or stretch, as well as in their actual cost of productions.5 The designs are then completed by letting air into the chinks between the body and the garment. Miyake refers to this air as 'Ma.'6 On account of the Ma, the body shape in the garment can't be seen in the outer appearance. It is not until the garment changes its expression through motion that the inner body can be recognised. Miyake considers Japanese culture to be rather spiritual and the physical senses restrained, characteristics that can also be seen in Nou costumes. He regards Nou costumes as allowing the players to express their spirituality by wrapping their bodies in an oriental way. In olden times, Japanese people usually adopted such attitudes, making and their minds and bodies relax in the same way when they put on kimonos. From the kimono, Miyake got the idea of enhancing the decorations of the fabrics and making the garments resonate with the human body.



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figure1 .Jacket, Aprondress, Skirt 1976

Cotton Awa shijira . Shijira is the Japanese traditional

fabric like sucker.

He first became interested in Japanese dyeing and weaving in his student days and after coming back from New York, his focus of interest was Japanese workers, such as Tobi7, Kurumahiki8 or peasants. This interest has prevailed right throughout his work. According to Miyake, there are some fixed ideas in the fashion industry that the West is more beautiful than the East, or that fashion means dressing up. He set out to break these taboos and discover the beauty of Japanese people. At first, he found beauty in the women who worked in the country and in an old activist in the women's movement. Not only were these women Japanese but also they were old, so they did not fit the fashion standard mould of beauty. They lived the unchangeable reality of their lives through labour or ideology.

figure 2. Coat dress 1976

The fabric is inspired by Tanzen, the Japanese traditional

fabric in the triple cloth with fancy check. But the light

color are not from Tanzen.

figure 3. Bistier'Rattan Body' 1982

Made of rattan and vinyl. It was made in cooperation with

a workman of the tools for the Japanese tea ceremony.



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From Japan to the Orient

Miyake’s first theme of creation was formed under the concept of introducing some elements of the kimono into western clothing. This theme also questioned the origins of clothes. In Miyake's interpretation of clothes, the idea that the West is opposite to Japan, the orient, or the non-West can be seen. The theme ‘a piece of cloth’ fig.4 is not in opposition to the West, but the search for universal clothing reveals that it has some elements of both sides. This means that every nation has its original clothing culture from the very beginning, or that a garment can be made from only a piece of cloth.

Starting with the kimono, he then extended his interest to other oriental cultures. He attended the ‘Fashion Live Theatre’ event as a director, held in Kobe in 1981, and suggested sending some designers to Guatemala, Bali, India and Tibet to study the four points of the origin of clothes. The selected designers then went to these areas, discovered traditional practices still being conducted there and finally designed clothes adapted for mass production. In another case in 1984, he set out to revive traditional Indian fabrics in contemporary clothing. This work bore fruit as the fashion brand ‘ASHA’ and in two exhibitions, ‘Les Textiles de l'Inde et les Modeles Crees par Issey Miyake’ at Musee des Arts Decoratifs Paris and ‘HASTH - Indian hand-weaving with Miyake’ in Tokyo. In the exhibition’s catalogue, ‘Inventive Clothes’ in 1974, he insisted that this inane tendency to stick to Japanese tradition or cultural localities had to be abandoned, and that nothing more could be gained from making distinctions such as Japanese, American and European.9

figure 4. A piece of cloth 1977

Nitting goun

The universal clothing

Miyake worked as an assistant in Gefftey Beene for a year in New York after the May revolution in Paris. He got the idea of universal clothing through the influence of American culture that he experienced at that time. He was fascinated by the power of the young in American culture that was wielded by the hippie movement or pop culture at the end of the 1960s. He looked on the T-shirts and jeans as symbols of the liberty and freedom that transcended all boundaries of race, sex or class, and set his sights on clothes that everyone could wear in their daily lives. It was also from such a perspective that he began to notice Japanese working wear just after he returned to his native Japan.

This idea of universal clothing that has been the basis of his work was put into practice to some extent in ‘Pleats Please’ fig.5 in 1993. In this collection of pleats, permanent pleating was



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processed with heat after sawing, owing to technological innovations in chemical fibers. It was praised for presenting the possibility of clothes as a field of industrial design and for exploding established manufacturing processes. Pleated clothes maintain their original forms even when they are washed or folded. Their very simple designs are basically unchangeable though some new colors or patterns are added each season. It is not too much to say that ‘Pleats Please’ is a completed version of his universal clothing.

figure5. Pleats Please 1996

Made of polyester jersey.

There have been different pleating techniques used in his work prior to this. In the 1970s, in the ‘oniyoryu’ collection, he made lengthwise irregular ripples on fabric, to which the traditional Japanese technique of ‘shibori’ had been applied. In the 1980s, he made hand-processed pleats in polyester fabric and combined them with Japanese paper. Based on such details, including the repeated experiments he conducted for five years before ‘Pleats Please’ was presented, it is supposed that

his pleats were sourced from traditional Japanese techniques.

2. Miyake in the fashion industry

The ‘Japanese designers’

Miyake has had one bone of contention since working in Paris. It is that he is always asked to incorporate some Japanese elements into his designs just because he is Japanese. By the time he presented his first collection in the 1970s, Hanae Mori had already established her position and Kenzo Takada had begun to be noticed in Paris. Mori's designs were quoted from traditional Japanese patterns and fabrics, such as the graceful floral motives or the luxurious fabrics used for Obis. In a sense she embodied the past Japanism, while Miyake and Takada were accepted as the new popular Japanesque. Certainly Miyake and Takada had some points in common, and were put together under the label of ‘Japanese designers.’ It is said that their loose-fitting forms and layered garments still have an effect on western clothing today.10 Early in the 1980s, when Rei Kawakubo and Yhoji Yamamoto joined them, their first collections gave rise to much controversy in the fashion magazines and newspapers. The imperfection, the de-constructiveness and the achromatic colours on their designs were regarded as some spiritual Japanesque elements related to the aesthetics of Zen. Their style was termed ‘Japan Shock’ and accepted as a deviation from proper western dress-theory or an invasion of the boundary to the west.11 Then, Miyake was put together with them under the banner of the next ‘Japanese designers.’ Some avant-garde, progressive and experimental elements have been required of ‘Japanese designers’ since then. Under the heading of ‘Japanese designers,’ their values



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are approved in their designs on the one hand, but their personalities are neglected and confined within the limits of the ‘Japanese’ on the other.

From the point of Orientalism

Such a view of Japanese designers cannot be understood without considering the historical courses of the West and Japan. In western clothing history, it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that the Japanese influences appeared. Some influences of the kimono and other national clothing in oriental countries can be found clearly in the works of designers such as Paul Poret, Janne Paquin or Madeleine Vionnet at the start of haute couture. 12 It is considered to be part of the exoticism, called Japanism, that spread in the 19th century. The straight construction and the ease found in oriental native dresses were adapted to western dresses under the pressure to release women from corsets. And the motives or techniques used in traditional Japanese textiles were applied to European textiles. However, this extension of the dresses under the influence of Japanism was only for the middle and high classes, and only for a few items such as dresses or gowns.

At the same time, Japanese people gradually began to dress in western clothing. Kipling, as mentioned above, visited Japan twice at the end of the 19th century when he was a journalist. In his records at that time, he asked why Japanese people wore western clothes that were unsuitable to their physiques instead of the kimono, he thought that Japanese people would soon recognize this and eventually stop wearing western clothes.13 Though the West didn't meet the East in Kipling, in the modern fashion industry the situation is such that the West alone does not keep Japanese culture under its control.

The word Orientalism generally means a movement in European literature and painting with some romantic exoticism, or studies about the languages, arts, etc of oriental countries. But in Said, Orientalism is described as ‘a style of thought made between the Orient and the Occident’ or ‘a western style of domination over the Orient.’14 In this concept, for the Occident, the Orient is a place completely different from it and a symbol of obscurity, oppositeness and distance. At the heart of this, is the fundamental difference presumed to exist between the Orient and the Occident, and the Orient is typified as a peculiar idea. The Occident views the Orient as needing to be represented, taught, interpreted and redeemed from its deplorable position, and revived to modernity.

The biased perspective of Miyake as a ‘Japanese designer’ can be reduced from the point of this concept of Orientalism. According to Richard Martin and Harold Coda, Japan, as required by the West, had been an object of exoticism symbolized in kabuki, ukiyoe and samurai till the 1970s, and changed to an object that gave secular boisterous western culture some spiritual serenity in the latter half of the 1990s.15 Though they have a high opinion of Japanese designers, this opinion is filled with the typical idea and the Orientalism concept that Japan serves the West. In fact, many Japanese designers except Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have presented their collections in Paris and in other cities all over the world. But designers who don’t come under the banner of typical Japanese designers or agree with them are removed, and only a few are approved as designers who can bring useful or novel stimuli to western fashion.

In Said, the structure of Orientalism is not merely the binary opposition of the West and the East. In this style of thought, the Orient differs from the



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West or contradicts it, and should be taken onto the western side. Miyake set out to become a fashion designer influenced by fashion magazines such as ‘American Vogue’ or ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ in his boyhood. After the last war, people in Japan rushed to wear western clothes with the progress of westernization and Americanization. On the other hand, Japanese culture embodied in the kimono rapidly declined. Therefore, when Miyake began to notice Japanese traditions just after he came back to Japan, it was not a rediscovery inside him but a new discovery from a fresh perspective. In the same way as the West, he discovered the traditional cultures of Japan or other oriental countries, gave them redemption and revived them in contemporary fashion.

He presented his collection under the title of ‘Body Works’ in which he dealt with various materials besides fabric such as iron, paper and bamboo. Some of these works show Japanism that is different from previous works. In particular, the one named ‘Rattan Body’ looks like a samurai costume with a pleated skirt. Including this in a few pieces in ‘Body Works’ made more Japanesque impressions than all the other works of Miyake put together. In those days, he tried to build up his position by playing voluntarily his ‘Japanese’ role, while doubting the prejudice of the ‘Japanese designers.’ His works on oriental countries except Japan can be explained by such style in Orientalism. Western Orientalism was fully imported to Japan and still exists in the present day. For all the refutations and criticisms of Orientalism, it is supposed that it has infiltrated throughout most Japanese people and is commonly held as a style of thought. Miyake mimicked the West in trying to create universal clothing. Above this, the contradiction that Miyake has taken can be restored to its original structure consisting of the rule and the ruled, the West and the East. The West as the rule requires the East to continue to be

different from itself, in addition to mimicking its culture and introducing its values. In the modern fashion industry, Miyake has kept the binal parts of mimicking the West and of being apart from the West while, at the same time, being a ‘Japanese designer.’

Conclusion

At the end of the 19th century, the western mode had become superior to most national costumes all over the world under the government of the imperialists. In practical terms, the West also lost its own clothing aesthetics at the same time. Especially, some traditional decoration techniques of western clothes barely survived the adjustment to industrial production. Bruno du Roselle pointed out that western clothing, since World War , ‘has been one of the most desolate and least brilliant modes, furthermore the least imaginative and creative modes.’16 The worldwide unification of the clothing mode has created the various desires and necessities for the self-expression of the wearers. In the recent fashion industry, the products, the capital and the talent have been reorganized on a world scale, and the new markets are eagerly being cultivated in response to international economies. The creativity of the designers cannot lead the uniformed mode in one direction by itself. Although depending on the individual creations of the designers is originally a very western way, special to haute couture, it is regarded as a dressmaking laboratory and just manages to survive with the selling of licensed contracts.

Miyake said that if there were something left for the designer to do as a creator, it would be to incorporate poesy, and that the creators of the next generation had to have sufficient imagination to



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control the technology. When Miyake aimed at universal clothing such as T-shirts and jeans, he aimed to present a little imagination to individuals of the masses, while recognizing the fact that the mode is rather unified had taken root. It is supposed that he has been trying to confront, not the invention or the ideal, but the reality in his fight for traditional Japanese fabrics.

Endnotes

1 Japanese fabric woven out of high twist yarns with fine crinkles on the surface. 2 Japanese hand-woven fabric made from yarns of uneven thickness, manually spun from silk. 3 A method of resist dyeing in which the required design is securely tied or stitched onto the fabric before dyeing. 4 A weaving method with supplementary weft patterns in thick, glossy silk or gold or silver thread, appearing much like embroidery. 5 Larsen, Jack. (1988) Fabric designs on Makiko Minagawa, Makiko Minagawa "TEXTURE," Tokyo: Kodansha 6 A term widely used in Japanese traditional arts to designate an artistically placed interval in time or space. 7 A steeplejack. 8 A worker who pulls a rickshaw . 9 Miyake, Issey. (1975), Staring at the Evidences of Time, "Inventive Clothes 1909-1939," p.79, Tokyo 10 Fukai, Akiko. (1994), Japonism in Fashion, Tokyo: Heibonsha 11 Kondo, Dirinne.(1977) Orientalising: Fashioning Japan in about Face, New York: Routledge

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Japanese Tradition in Isssey Miyake