People and Placelessness: Paper Clothing in Japan

Abstract

Human beings are anchored to their landscapes and communities in tight tangles through material culture. In Japan, handmade washi paper is one example of how this process materializes, and traditional paper garments, kamiko, offer insights into a specific method for fashion design that considers embeddedness within landscapes and local communities. Paper may not seem like a suitable material for making clothing, but can be strong and durable if made in a specific way. In Japan, clothing is one of the hundreds of products which have been made out of paper over the centuries. This article will position Japan’s handmade paper clothing traditions within discussions of place in order to develop perspectives on localism in sustainable fashion research. Paper clothing will be discussed in the context of place and placelessness in tandem with critical regionalism in order to frame this material-making culture as an adversarial fashion practice that is embedded in local landscapes and communities—a practice which challenges the global scale and standardization of the dominant production system. This article asks: How is the “local” embodied in paper clothing and textiles in the Japanese context? What can we learn from a longstanding small-scale material-making tradition and its material flows that can contribute toward a practice of sustainable resource use for fashion design? To answer these questions, this article examines paper clothing (kamiko) and textiles (shifu) made from washi in Shiroishi, a small town in Miyagi Prefecture.