Kimono Maker Wonders: Is It the End of the Silk Road?

Sometimes tradition is just not enough.

Or so Koji Wada has learned. Wada, the owner of Kasuri Dyeworks in downtown Berkeley, is spending this week closing his shop, unrolling, rerolling and packing the bolts of ornate fabrics that have been his business for more than 30 years.

The soft plumes of silk suspended in Wada’s shop are used to make kimonos, the traditional dress of Japanese men and women. Decades ago, Japanese men began abandoning kimonos for Western dress. And in the last couple of decades, Japanese women have too. Now many rent kimonos only for special occasions, and the market has shrunk for the craftsmen who weave the intricate, hand-dyed cloth they are made of.

Fewer craftsmen are taking up the tradition, making the price for the naturally reversible textiles skyrocket. Moreover, the mass market for machine-printed textiles has overcome the painstaking tradition of hand-dyed fabric.

“These are dead, as of two years ago,” said Wada, 58, lifting a roll of burgundy-colored jacquard-patterned silk from the Tango region of Japan. “The craftsmen are all doing something else -- selling cars or insurance or something.”

Wada says the demise of his business is due to supply, not demand. Although his customer base has increased, the number of weavers supplying Wada’s shop has dropped from about 350 to 40.

Over the years, Wada had to court the remaining weavers. Whenever he met a new craftsman on his thrice-yearly visits to Japan, Wada endured two-hour-long conversations full of platitudes and palaver, a delicate dance of dropping hints about the fabrics he admired and waiting for the craftsman to offer a price. Directly asking a price would make Wada appear cheap and uncouth.

“It was excruciating sometimes. That’s why I started smoking again,” Wada said, only half joking.

Wada always bought the highest-quality fabric the purveyor showed. When he returned to that supplier the following year, Wada’s name was on the company docket, not just as a buyer, but as a buyer of taste. Year by year, the quality of the fabrics he was shown improved.

When he returned to his 15-by-60-foot shop in Berkeley, he educated the quilters, artists, interior decorators and collectors who are his main customers about the skills employed in the pricey fabrics.

Wada unwrapped a shirred piece of dark blue cloth, revealing tiny silk nubs, each nub concentric circles of three colors. The cloth is shibori tie-dyed, and among the best sellers, despite its price of $75 a yard. Nearby lay another roll, this one a silk jacquard with a $125-a-yard price tag that read: “Must be seen in sunlight.” Natural light unveiled shimmering blue bands across what appeared in fluorescent light to be a monochrome gray-green fabric.

Cost is an issue, Wada admits. A kimono in the latest fashion, of the highest-quality silk, can easily command a $100,000 price tag. And wearing a kimono requires a special hairdo, special sandals and special accessories.

For the obi alone -- the sash that goes with the traditional garment -- “you’re talking $10,000 easily,” said Fred Notehelfer, director of the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies. “How many women today are prepared to put out the $20,000 or $30,000 for a kimono?”

“The younger people can’t afford it, aren’t interested,” he said. “They’re just as comfortable to go in a miniskirt to a function as in what they think of as in an old fuddy-duddy tradition.”

Ayami Soto, a 21-year-old waitress at Hanichimonme restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, said she has worn kimonos a couple of times. “It’s really tight in the stomach, and uncomfortable,” she said. “Maybe I’ll wear one at my wedding, but there’s no special occasion for me to really wear them.”

Miwa Mizutani, a 20-year-old student in Gifu, Japan, is attending a 3-month class on how to wear a kimono.

“Most of the young generation don’t know how to wear them,” she said by e-mail. “If we go to kimono school, it’s expensive, and even if we know how to wear it, kimono are expensive. When we wear kimono, we wear two underwear and four belts and if you are slim you have to put in some towels.”

Even as some try to preserve the heritage of wearing kimonos, the art itself is changing. The craftsmen who make the tools that the dyers and weavers employ use different materials, which subtly changes the quality of the fabrics, said Sharon Takeda, curator of the costume and textiles department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Wada, meanwhile, hopes to maintain relationships with those old-style craftsmen in Japan in order to sell their fabrics on a limited basis at craft shows throughout the United States.

“I don’t think kimono will absolutely disappear,” he said. “But it will only be enjoyed by people with disposable income, lots of it, like the Mrs. Sonys and the Mrs. Toyotas.”