Summary of SEAA Reads, session 13 from June 21, 2025
Selling the Kimono - An ethnography of crisis, creativity and hope. Julie Valk, 2021 (Routledge)
During the summer session hosted by Bill Kelly, there were eight anthropologists at the Zoom meeting online. The session started with the larger topic of kimono as a cultural icon inside and outside of Japan, including the "kimono Wednesdays" at the Boston Museum in 2015. Thinking of Kyoti, there have been various reactions by observers and by residents when overtourism spills over to rental kimono for short-term visitors to wear in their walks around town. Valk's ethnography touches on many topics and includes close-up and more wide-angle views of the people, places, and issues connected to the business and traditions of designing, making, wholesaling and retailing, then selecting and wearing and storing them before bequeathing them to descendants.
Our host pointed to the distinction between ethnographic inquiry (the book spends some time on methods and the mix of serendipity, false leads and frustrations) in the field and also on ethnographic reasoning (the book gives glimpses into the author's reasoning and connections drawn as the project unfolded, partly by plan and partly by opportunities that presented themselves). Something like this writing can also be seen in Satsuki Takahashi's book about fishing families on the Pacific coast in the Fukushima-prefecture area. Since the book includes both of these dimensions, it offers several places that prompt discussion. One of the Zoom participants hearkened back to first impressions of the early 1960s in Kyoto when women in kimono were the majority; now it is very much a rare sight, apart from occupational dress codes.
The gendered wearing and meaning of men's and women's kimono was another area of discussion. Until the millennium turning, one person remembered that it would not be unusual for a man to return home from work and change from his Western clothing into kimono. The author's observation about the trend away from kimono as ie (household) cultural capital and now toward a personal preference, experience, or habit was more or less acknowledged during the book discussion. Another point that rankled some readers was the casual use of kimono as 'fashion' and personal taste to contrast it with the arc of the 20th century when kimono was conventional, accepted or expected formal clothing that reflected not only on the person but also on the household they were connected to. After all 'fashion' has many facets and functions, the kimono case of personal and non-conventional uses and TPO (time, place, occasion) context would seem to be different to 'fashion' behavior, alone.
During the online conversation the analytical dangers of starting Japanese history in the post-World War II era came up since the author misses the numerous changes in kimono fashion over the longer arc of generations before the Pacific War, too. And using post-WWII as the point of contrast when defining the idea of (personal) "fashion kimono" (the conformity in the 1960s, etc. to a standard providing cultural capital). A couple of people online felt it might be better to think of the kimono meanings and practices on a continuum (all of which has to do with the personalization and lifestyle choices of the present); not either ‘fashion’ or ‘received rules’.
Another strand in the Zoom conversation was the author's handling of the several case studies as subcultures or "geek" (or nerdy hobbyist) instances of superfans of kimono brings with them several kinds of interest or (personal and popular culture) meaning. The risk in documenting a few extremely dedicated interest groups is that the larger generalizations concerning language and society in Japan may, therefore, not apply very well. The author's shift from "thick description" rich in details and voices to other passages of "thin description" is also part of the challenge in documenting and discussing complicated, capitalist, mass-mediated life like the Japanese setting: going from innovations at the individual shop owner level and the individual kimono-wearing instances all the way up to economic forces like globalization and the extended recession across the country, worsened by the massive scale of the 2011 triple disasters centering around Fukushima prefecture. In other words, the roots for anthropology in small-scale community participant-observation are harder to use in multi-sites, multi-mediated engagements with the people involved in creating and the ones who pay for the sartorial tradition of kimono wearing.
Still another part of the Zoom conversation was to ask about parallel subjects to kimono in Japan (or abroad). The tug of war between modern consumerism and the legacy ways of making and its products can also be seen, in some respects, for the small-scale sake brewing families (even as large volume, industrial brewers of sake also cater to buyers’ tastes). There are washi makers (Japanese paper) and cutlery makers (uchi-hamono) that echo the issues presented in the kimono book. Outside of the 20th century, formal contexts for kimono wearing, and other than the new generation of 'fashion' displays of novel and personal interpretations of 2nd hand garments, there continues to be a small but strong set of traditional arts that complement kimono wearing: Noh recitations (kabuki, bunraku, too) and stagecraft, flower and tea ceremonies, as well as certain musical performances.
On the subject of methodology - with one set of contacts expanding into other opportunities for observing and interviewing, one of the Zoom participants spotlighted the power of the furniture invented to store the flat-folded kimono (tansu): all those decades of aggregated kimono from previous formal occasions constitute a "story vault" and a lens into family change and continuity. But when traditions are stretched and (unspoken and customary) rules are broken, when does a kimono stop being a kimono - the starting point might be a 2nd hand, once-treasured outfit with matching obi wrap and accessories like footwear and handbag, say, but now decades later and in the imagination of different generations (or indeed in sales locations far from the Japanese islands) perhaps the way of wearing the elements or the ensemble changes to the degree that it no longer is Kimono with capital K, but now is something hinting at its origins, but hardly a kimono in spirit.
Another thought is to use the material culture of kimono and the circles of craft workers and popular culture as a process or a metaphor that goes on in the changing generations of Japanese life: something of formal rules and legacies gradually is taken apart and remade according to new situations. People in the 1950s to 1980s made meaning of the kimono industry and art, but now in the 2020s there are also ways to make new meaning of the earlier outfits.
For other material culture that slumbers in the transfer and entrusting from older generations to newer generations it is not just the duty and honor of being a responsible steward taking care of "grandma's set of china dishes" (Western analogy), but also things like unwanted, outdated, but memory-filled homes left empty when the parent or grandparent dies or has to move to a care facility (Akiya, 'vacant housing stock' in disrepair). Similarly of (paddy) lands that people cling to, even when no longer in production or leased by others. All these inheritances are a form of value (memory worth and exchange worth) from long before the consumerist and commodified way of living. Accumulating land, houses, or kimono are forms of worth that stewards find it hard to part with.
In sum, the gathering of Japan anthropologists online on June 21 touched on many dimensions of this recent ethnography - its methods, its descriptive thickness and variation in detail, and the spotlighting of local voices and viewpoints. These are questions not limited to social analysis in Japan, but of interest to colleagues all around greater East Asia and worldwide. The book has a lot of character and personality, although parts seem to sound like dissertation writing, more than one person pointed out. The vicarious experience of riding along with the author during the fieldwork is engaging and shows the emergent, fluid way that research questions form and reflections are distilled, too. As the Zoom host concluded, often the best books for discussion are neither filled with objections nor lacking criticisms altogether. Instead it is the experience of an imperfect book that can give the best food for thought.
Comments
Post a Comment