Bringing a new wind to the culture of Nishijin textile! “Bank of Craft” introduces a new charm of Nishijin textile fused with “Street culture”.

J&J Business Development Corp. established the project called “Bank of Craft”, which promotes the use of traditional crafts in the regional ecosystem by fusing creative works, art, and digital technology to develop tourism resources, solve regional issues, and create a new primary resource of revenue in craft production areas, rather than just maintaining the value of the craft as a product. 

As the first edition of this project, Kyoto Nishijin Textile, FINEPLAY, 430(Four-Thirty),and CURRENT have joined this collaboration to create premium skateboards and kendamas, which are now on sale.

In this article, we interviewed Kentaro Yasuda, the CEO of Yasuda Corporation., Soichiro Imagawa, the president of Kiyata Imagawa Orimono Co., and Sakio Ohba, the president of Kyoto Nishijin Oba. They are in charge of the design production of this project and also are the members of N180 (Nishijin One Eighty), a group that promotes new culture in the Nishijin.

We are honored to have central figures of this project that crosses over the two different cultures between Japan’s world-class traditional culture and street culture which originated from the West. We asked them about the historical background of the Nishijin Textile, the challenges they face, and their thoughts behind the unique collaboration of “Urban Sports x Nishijin Textile”.

Kentaro Yasuda (Hereinafter: Yasuda)
Soichiro Imagawa (Hereinafter: Imagawa)
Sakio Ohba (Hereinafter: Ohba)

Historical background of how “diversity” became a characteristic of Nishijin Textile

From the left is Kentaro Yasuda, Soichiro Imagawa, Sakio Ohba

The history of textiles in Kyoto began about 1,200 years ago when the first people arrived in Japan. So this traditional craft has a very long history, including the period when Kyoto was the capital of Japan.

Since Nishijin textile craftsmen in Kyoto have dealt with the detailed needs of the wealthy class such as the so-called noble family and royalty, this industry has built a system to tailor to detailed requests and needs from customers.

Soichiro Imagawa, the president of Kiyata Imagawa Orimono Co.

This system is enabled by “division of work”, which means that the work is allocated to specialists in each process. This “division of work” is quite characteristic of Nishijin textiles craftsmanship and its own “diversity”, Soichiro Imagawa said.

Imagawa: Back in the days when all Japanese wore kimonos, kimonos were not treated as special clothing but had various uses ranging from everyday wear to ceremonial wear.Nishijin textile manufacturers made obis and kimonos to meet those needs, so it was not a matter of them “preserving some tradition” but rather creating more products that fit the background of the times. In this process, the “division of work” was developed to make it more efficient as an industry, and specialists in each process came out and expanded the “diversity” of products to be made. This is a historical backdrop that the Nishijin Textile industry has travelled.

Challenges facing the “Modern” Nishijin Textile

Over time, however, the Nishijin textile industry has faced many challenges. One of the most serious problems is a lack of successors.

In the division of work that has supported the diversity of the Nishijin textile, even if only one specialist in each process ceased to exist, the entire process would come to a standstill.