The Wearable Art of Japan : Unprecedented Exhibit Provides a Window Into Nation’s Culture Between 1615 and 1868

In the language of clothes, the kimono speaks volumes.

The eloquent kosode-- the precursor of the kimono--is the subject of a major new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan,” which opened earlier this month, is the most comprehensive exhibit of kosode ever, anywhere, including Japan.

The exhibit features more than 200 exquisite objects, including a kosode and five obi, or sashes, deemed “important cultural properties” by the Japanese government and allowed to leave that country only with special permission. But the kosode on exhibit are more than beautiful things. They also function as a window on Japanese culture between 1615 and 1868, when a succession of shoguns made Edo (now Tokyo) their capital and when the arts and commerce flourished throughout the land.

Curated by LACMA staff members Dale Carolyn Gluckman and Sharon Sadako Takeda, the show features mostly elaborate garments worn by aristocratic women. As the curators point out, everyone in Edo-period Japan wore kosode, but the garments of the poor tended to be worn until they wore out.

Many of the simply constructed, lushly decorated kosode in the show were bought for special occasions that are reflected in their decoration. One kosode from the late 17th or early 18th Century features a design of maple leaves and wide-brimmed sedge hats and was probably worn (along with a sedge hat) for the traditional fall viewing of the turning maple leaves.

One reason the kosode are so intriguing is that they are clothes: As a result, they are far more intimate and emotionally charged than teacups and other utilitarian objects. Kosode were used to send messages about the status and taste of the wearer, often quite explicit ones. Some became elaborate visual puns or puzzles. One kosode from the late 17th Century features characters from a well-known poem, characters placed on the garment in imitation of an aristocratic style of calligraphy. The garment also has diagonal stripes that suggest the mountains mentioned in the poem.

The official position of Japan’s leaders was that each stratum of society should wear clothes appropriate to its station. Through a series of so-called sumptuary laws, certain kinds of dress were limited to particular classes. Thus, at one point only the nobility and clergy of the highest rank were permitted to wear clothes featuring beni red, an extremely costly dye made from safflowers that produced a shade associated with youthful beauty. (According to the fascinating catalogue to the exhibit, older Japanese women continue to eschew bright red in favor of violet and other colors thought to be more seemly.)

Undaunted by the ban, wealthy individuals of the merchant class found ways around the laws. Dyers learned how to make a fake beni red, which led to a sumptuary law in 1683 banning “new and unusual weaving and dyeing.” But, as any parent of a teen-ager can tell you, fashion has an urgency all its own, and wealthy individuals of the lower class continued to flaunt the law. Denied the right to wear beni- red outerwear, they took up beni- red undergarments, such as the loincloths women wore for bathing.

The exhibit has been in the making for almost six years, its curators said. “It started out small and modest, as most projects do, and then turned into the Eiffel Tower,” said Gluckman, with a laugh. She explained that LACMA has about 70 kosode fragments in its permanent collection, and in trying to find out all they could about these, the curators realized the richness of the kosode as a theme. Over the years, they established ties with curators in Japan, relationships that proved invaluable when it came time to obtain objects for the show.

Because many of the garments and other objects are fragile and can only be exposed to light for limited periods of time, all the pieces in the exhibit will be changed halfway through. The curators expect visitors from around the world, especially Japan, and they hope visitors will see both phases of the show.

Nagasaki Iwao, curator of textiles at the Tokyo National Museum and a major contributor to the project, has been in Los Angeles to participate in the installation. He said there was some trepidation in Japan about allowing Japanese cultural treasures to come to Los Angeles, especially in light of the riots, but said he had confidence both in the museum’s security system and its climate control. He noted that it is drier here than in Japan, and that the museum is acceding to his request to keep the gallery a little more humid than usual, for the sake of the fabrics.

By definition, fashion shifts. One of the pleasures of the exhibit is seeing how many ways the intrinsically simple kosode can be transformed. Sometimes the back of the garment becomes a canvas. One early 19th-Century garment was painted by Sakai Hoitsu, a famous practitioner of the Rimpa style. The kosode features a plum tree whose branches curve onto the wearer’s shoulders. Other kosode are superb examples of the dyer’s demanding craft.

At the beginning of the Edo period, fashion trickled down from the ruling classes. But perhaps because fashion always resists the status quo, less lofty influences began to modify dress. The presence of Portuguese missionaries in Japan caused a temporary rage for wearing crucifixes. And at some point in the Edo period, fashion began to trickle up.

Men and women of the samurai class began to look to such raffish arbiters of fashion as the actors of the Kabuki theater, who would commission costumes for new roles that caused certain styles and specific colors to become wildly popular--for a time. Even the women of pleasure who inhabited the so-called Floating World began to dictate fashion. But a certain elegant eroticism is quite naturally part of the kosode’s allure. Takeda pointed to painted screens of the 17th Century that titillated viewers by showing nothing more than two kosode on a lacquered kimono rack. Such garments might very well have been left behind by unseen lovers.

Part I of the kosode show continues through Dec . 20. Part II begins Dec . 24 and continues through Feb . 7, 1993. LACMA is at 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Call (213) 857-6000.