Category: April A to Z

K is for Kintsugi

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Kintsugi, 金継ぎ, golden joinery

If you’ve ever seen a beautiful piece of Japanese pottery or ceramic shot through with a line of warm gold filling a crack, you’ve seen kintsugi. It’s the art of using lacquer and gold dust to repair an item, giving it a new life and a new purpose. Kintsugi exemplifies the Japanese qualities of mottainai (regret over waste) and wabi-sabi (the acceptance of impermanence and imperfection). Rather than throw out and waste a broken item, it is a way to give it new life, and create something unique.

You can buy kits to do your own real kintsugi repair, but they are expensive and hard to find. If you’d like to do an inspired DIY version using things you may already have at home or that can easily be bought online from places like Amazon, keep reading! You can follow this tutorial to repair an already-broken item or use it to create a new, unique item like a coaster or trivet. Instructions for both are below.

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J is for Junithitoe

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Junihitoe (also juunihitoe), 十二単, “twelve layers”, traditional layered robes

When you think of “historical” Japanese clothing, what comes to mind? Odds are, at least one thing is the gorgeous, elaborate, cumbersome junihitoe worn by high-ranking women of the Heian era court. Like many things that we now consider intrinsically Japanese, the junihitoe was inspired by contemporary Chinese fashion. The elegant drape and sumptuous layers evoked the sophisticated hanfu, with a distinctly Japanese flair.

The name junihitoe literally means “twelve layers”, but is a bit of a misnomer. It included the kimono-like layers but also under-layers and over-layers. They were known to have anywhere from four to twenty layers (can you imagine the bulk?!) but were eventually fixed at a specific arrangement. The entire structure was composed of the following:

  • Kosode - Narrow sleeved under-robe
  • Nagabakama - Long, formal hakama
  • Hitoe - Single unlined silk layer
  • Itsutsuginu - Five or six colour-coordinated layers forming the bulk of the ensemble
  • Uchiginu - Stiff silk robe to provide shape and support
  • Uwagi - Smaller, narrower decorative silk layer often denoting rank
  • Kawaginu - Short jacket-type layer
  • Mo - Decorative apron-like skirt worn trailing in the back

The colours of the itsutsuginu have specific meanings and representations. The combinations would change depending on the season or specific celebratory event. For a very thorough and easy-to-read list of these combinations, please check out this Guide to Kasane no Irome on Sengoku Daimyo.

Since women of the court often devoted themselves to intellectual and aesthetic pursuits such as writing, painting, and poetry, the weight and bulk of the junihitoe was not a significant impediment to daily life. They had attendants to assist them with nearly everything from the dressing process to fetching food and items.

However, they’re obviously utterly impractical for the modern woman. Nowadays, there are very few places you’ll see someone in one of these ensembles. Typically, when a new emperor is enthroned in Japan, both he and his wife will wear traditional court robes; for the empress this means junihitoe.

Aside from traditional ceremonies such as these, people can choose to be professionally dressed in junihitoe at henshin (dressing) studios and then pose for photographs. There are also wedding uchikake made to recall their multi-layered feel, such as those made by designers Mai-Curren, but the layers in these are faked, using extra fabric around the collar, sleeves, and hem as well as a trailing hem reminiscent of the mo (apron). They have a very distinctive look to them.

If you had the opportunity, would you choose to try a junithitoe on? It seems very overwhelming, but I would still love to wear such an ensemble, if only for photographs.

I is for Ikebana

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Ikebana, 生け花, 活け花, traditional flower arrangement


If you’ve been a reader here for a while, you’ve likely seen my efforts to teach myself the basics of ikebana. I do feel like I’ve reached a place where I can’t really grow any more without more focused teaching and direction, but the world isn’t exactly in a state where that’s an option currently. Maybe I’ll look into it once things go back to normal, whenever that might be.

Getting fresh flowers right now isn’t exactly a walk in the park. But my lovely father, who had to leave the house to get food and fill prescriptions, was sweet enough to snag these for me from the flower-seller at the local mall. I love the vibrant contrast in them; they almost feel like an inverted Japanese flag. I went for a straightforward three-height arrangement with only a bit of greenery to anchor it. It may not be anything terribly exciting, but fresh flowers bring me a little brightnessright now, and I

H is for Hanafuda

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Hanafuda, 花札, flower cards, traditional playing cards

Did you know that the Nintendo we all know and love started out as a company that made playing cards? Their original product was a set of hanafuda cards! Hanafuda are small, traditional Japanese cards featuring designs of flowers and seasonal motifs. Like our more familiar decks of playing cards, there are lots of different games and variations you can play with hanafuda.  To this day, Nintendo still makes novelty hanafuda sets. So do several other companies in Japan. You can find decks featuring Super Mario Bros, Kirby, beloved movies like Spirited Away, and even a Pokemon set!

However, if you’d like your own free set, I’m here for you. I’ve created a muted, monochrome set based on the original designs but using the colour scheme from this blog I love so much. All you need to do is print out this PDF on heavy-weight card paper (I had blue and white so I used blue for the background side but plain white works just as well). Then glue each card sheet to one background sheet with stick glue, put a heavy weight on them to dry them flat (I used books), and then cut them out after 24 hours or so.

Click here to download the PDF

For game instructions, Wikipedia has your back. Enjoy your new hanafuda deck, and have fun!

G is for Gosho-Guruma

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Gosho-guruma, 御所車図, Imperial Carts

Confession time: these representations of the carts used by imperial nobles are quite possibly one of my least-favourite kimono motifs. To me they look like deformed marshmallows. Because of that, using gosho-guruma as today’s word for the letter G didn’t even occur to me at first. But then I remembered I have this one kimono I love, despite the motifs. I guess the fact that they’re partially hidden behind lovely flowers helps a lot!

I’ve been wanting to see how this kimono looks with this particular orange obi ever since I bought it. I think it’s perfect for this particular coordination, since it’s very low-contrast against the kimono, which helps make the cart motifs the main feature. I pulled out accessory colours from the floral arrangements in front of the carts. I’m not sure how well this particular obijime works, but I don’t hate it. I just think it might have been better with a more muted one to match the low-contrast feel of the rest of the ensemble.

Overall I think I did a good job of featuring a motif I am not fond of! That’s the important part.

Items used in this coordination