The Daily Telegraph

The simple garment that tells the history of Japan

Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk

- By Gaby Wood Booking until June 21. Tickets: £16 to £18; vam.ac.uk

In classical Japanese love poetry, the term “tagasode”, meaning “whose sleeves?”, was used to refer to an absent woman who had left her beautiful robes behind. By the early 17th century, tagasode had become a form of genre painting: the decorative objects known as “whose sleeves?” were folding screens on which a range of kimonos had been painted. The example in the Victoria & Albert’s new Kimono exhibition shows six painted kimonos, in a variety of prints, airing on lacquered clothing racks against a gold background. Hung this way, rendered in two dimensions, the clothes are almost abstract: shapes and patterns, but more importantl­y, suggestion­s. What can we know about the woman who has left the room containing these depicted silks? Through the keyhole, anything might be conjured: fantasy, identity, nudity.

The V&A’S ambitious show, curated by Anna Jackson, keeper of the museum’s

Asian department, elegantly reveals the ways in which this apparently simple, apparently unchanging item of clothing has carried centuries of culture and imaginatio­n in the folds of its fabric. Sex and secrecy, politics and power, fashion and film, anxiety and influence: all can be traced through the kimono – which literally means “the thing to wear” – documented with sweep and precision.

Some of the story is surprising­ly familiar: a Hiroshige woodblock print from the 1840s showing Mount Fuji in the background depicts – you may not have known this – a kimono shop in the foreground. Kimono pattern books circulated in the 17th century the way Vogue does now. Product placement is rife. Sex is indicated both openly and in code. Actors were shown in triptych prints, at home with their families, like celebritie­s in Hello! magazine.

It’s also global rather than exotic: the arrangemen­t of the exhibition is designed to show the ways in which Japan has spoken to the rest of the world, and vice versa. Sometimes the evidence lay in the physical movement of the garments themselves: a record of four Dutch ships travelling from Japan in 1709 shows the traders to have bought 11 kimono and six bolts of fabric.

Other instances of influence are related to what an artist has seen or imagined: the kimono metamorpho­ses into a radically simple draped yellow dress in the hands of Paul Poiret in 1913; it is immortalis­ed in swift strokes of oil paint by James Mcneill Whistler in 1864; it is worn, exported and adapted in 1916 by a woman who inspired a character in Proust. In these instances the kimono’s travelling is imaginary but its impact is palpable. The earliest example on display dates from the 1660s; the latest was made moments ago. In between there are samurai clothes as well as Freddie Mercury’s.

There are some astonishin­gly beautiful objects here, revealing technical prowess as well as thrilling detail. It took, for instance, 12,000 safflowers to make the beni red dye for a single kimono in the early 19th century. And although, as Jackson points out, we are used to seeing these extraordin­ary garments as works of art, it’s their worn-ness that makes them moving. Kimono may be like canvases in their invitation to view artistry, but their proximity to the human form is the best reminder of some sobering historical facts. There is an Obi sash here designed for the 1940 Tokyo Olympics, which were cancelled because of the war. As the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo approach, we might think not just of symbolic moments, but of all these lives past. “Whose sleeves?” indeed.

 ??  ?? Symbolic: Kimono styling by Akira Times, left, and a woodblock print, right, by Katsukawa Shunsen, 1804-18
Symbolic: Kimono styling by Akira Times, left, and a woodblock print, right, by Katsukawa Shunsen, 1804-18
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