Exploring the Fabric of a Society : Art review: ‘Splendor of the Dragon: Costumes of the Ryukyu Kingdom’ weaves a rich tapestry of Okinawa’s identity.

Anyone might be forgiven for wondering where in the world they are on hearing the name of the Craft and Folk Art Museum’s current main exhibition. The title “Splendor of the Dragon” suggests China. The subtitle “Costumes of the Ryukyu Kingdom” identifies the subject, but the location remains fuzzy. (Anyone planning to go to good old Ryukyu on their next vacation?)

As it turns out, Ryukyu was the ancient name of Okinawa, those 140 islands that dot the East China Sea, south of Japan, like a broken string of coral beads. The confusion is significant. It bespeaks a people of distinct identity historically besieged by foreign powers with large appetites.

In some ways Okinawa doesn’t have a lot going for it. Only about 40 of the islands are inhabited. Natural resources are not bounteous. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, the Ryukyu cracked their nut as respected and cosmopolitan sailor-merchants.

Also, like many people with more talent than means, they became inventive practitioners of the crafts. Their weaving and dyeing skills--the focus of this exhibition--were legendary. At home, an enamored male knew he’d won the day if his intended made him a sash. He must have been particularly tickled if his sash bore the centipede pattern. It symbolized her desire for many conjugal encounters after marriage.

The everyday fabric for Ryukyuans was drawn from the fibers of a species of nonbearing banana tree. Strong, light and cool, it was perfect for Ryukyu’s humid, subtropical climate. Examples on view usually have simple striped patterns. Examined today, they appear the furthest thing from plebeian.

Hung out flat for display, rather like paintings, the weave has a subtle atmospheric bleed and a tendency to give surfaces an inescapable optical rhythm that changes from one garment to the next. They bespeak a kind of Arcadian culture where people valued the innocent eloquence of simplicity. The only comparable aesthetic experience grows out of highly honed contemporary paintings like those of Agnes Martin.

In 1372, the emperor of China decided he wanted a piece of Ryukyu’s action. The world was beginning to notice that whatever the islands lacked, their strategic position was superb. China’s emissary proposed a “tributary relationship,” which, decoded, is a polite bit of arm-twisting in which the Ryukyuans gave lip service to Chinese primacy in exchange for access to mainland markets. As such blackmail goes, it was apparently fairly benign.

Thus, the Chinese dragon and its attendant silk robes entered and influenced Ryukyuan costume. A series of dance kimono are topped with wonderful chapeau that look like a combination of turban, umbrella and flower. Pattern and color are understandably more aggressive in these designs for theater. There is an almost garish look here; that Ryukyuan delight in surface, humbly restrained before, now swaggers. Yet the intrinsic optical rhythm remains, albeit more undulant.

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Things got rougher in 1609 when Japan’s lord of Satsuma overran the islands and kidnapped the king. He was returned only after Ryukyu agreed to a large and ongoing ransom in the form of taxes. To add a touch of Gilbert & Sullivan humor to all this, the Japanese insisted Ryukyu keep the arrangement secret from the Chinese.

Around 1879, Japan’s samurai dynasty faded and America’s commodore Perry steamed over the horizon. Japan’s new Meiji regime got worried. Maybe the foreign devils would seize Ryukyu to use as a gateway in and out of Asia. The islands were made a Japanese prefecture renamed Okinawa and so they remain.

However oppressive Japan’s influence was in other ways, its effect on Ryukyuan fabric was lovely. Ryukyuan craft artists seemed to make it a point of pride that their fabric would remain a thing of beauty. Japanese art’s love of the tension that comes from restrained natural color and pattern produced some of the most beautiful garments on view. They’re all endowed with that graceful rhythm that is probably the secret of the survival of the Ryukyuan spirit.

In World War II, the Battle of Okinawa virtually destroyed the island culture’s material heritage, as we are reminded by an attendant photography exhibition. The fabric and costumes exhibited, with the exception of some recent works, were among the few examples that survived in the rubble. The rare aristocratic Bingata costumes in this showing are the largest group ever seen in the United States.

Recent headlines attest that Okinawa is still trying to get free of foreign occupation, in this case our own. Happily, the exhibition reminds us that identity is rarely lost.

The display comes with a nice, small catalog that contributes to the deft interweaving of art and culture done here by CFAM curator Gloria Gonick.

* Craft and Folk Art Museum, 5800 Wilshire Blvd., through Jan. 14, closed Mondays. (213) 937-5544.