(1917–2003) was a Japanese textile artist. He was most famous for reviving and in part reinventing an otherwise lost late 15th- to early 16th-century textile dye technique known as (lit. "flowers at the crossroads"), which became the main focus for much of his life's work. As homage to the original technique and its legacy, he named the technique .
Kubota devised a new method of dyeing that produce unique richly coloured products, and he experimented with modern fabrics that would take well to the dyes and stitch-resist work.
Biography
Itchiku Kubota was born in Kanda, Tokyo, in 1917, the son of an antique dealer. Kubota grew up in an environment rich with opportunities to view traditional Japanese art: the neighbourhood in which he lived was filled with dye workshops.
In 1931, at the age of 14, Kubota left school to become the apprentice of Kobayashi Kiyoshi, a Tokyo-based kimono artist who specialized in hand-painted dyework (a paste resist-dyeing technique). Kubota also studied other techniques for decorating fabrics, as well as Japanese-style landscape painting and portraiture. By the age of 19, he had established a dye studio of his own.
Kubota first saw a fragment of fabric dyed in the style at the age of 20 in the Tokyo National Museum. The technique would go on to become the main focus of much of his life's work:
(lit. "flowers at the crossroads") was a popular dyeing method in the Muromachi (1336-1573) to early Edo period (1603-1867), before it fell out of fashion and its method of production was lost. The technique utilised stitched resist dyeing (), which was then elaborated upon with hand-painted dyework, typically in floral motifs. Gold and silver leaf and embroidery were also used to embellish the designs. However, little is known about the original meaning of the word , or the technique's original method of production, despite the knowledge of its combined techniques. By the beginning of the 17th century, other styles of dyeing and surface design (such as ) had become increasingly fashionable and vanished, leaving little trace of how the designs were created.
Kubota became fascinated by the technique and its unknown method of creation, as no other techniques in living memory used a combination of tie-dyeing and hand-painted dyework, making it very unusual for use on modern kimono. Because no instructions survived explaining the reproduction of the technique, and because the silk fabric necessary for its successful production (known as ) was no longer woven, Kubota was forced to experiment by himself for decades and devoted himself to reviving dyeing.
Post-war
In the following years, Kubota experienced a number of hardships; he had been drafted to the frontlines during the World War II, and spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp until his demobilization at the age of 31. On his return to Japan, he set up a workshop in Tokyo and went back to dyeing. Seven years later, he finally decided to devote himself to the creation of his own technique; Kubota had found recreation of the exact technique formerly used impossible, as the fabric originally used for the technique was no longer produced. Kubota also felt that it was meaningless to cling to the past and ignore the highest-quality contemporary silk textiles and synthetic dyes that were products of the modern world. Rather than simply replicate the technique, he decided to create it in modern form, by combining his dyeing skills, modern textiles and modern dyes with the complex resist-dyeing, delicate ink painting. In recreating the technique, Kubota used (silk crepe) in place of . The panels of fabric were stitched and dyed independently, before being joined together and assembled to form the kimono.
Kubota devised a new method of dyeing that produce unique richly coloured products, and he experimented with modern fabrics that would take well to the dyes and stitch-resist work. As homage to the original and its legacy, he named the technique . In 1977, when Kubota was 60 years old, he displayed his kimono for the first time in an exhibition in Tokyo. Although some traditionalists criticized Kubota for attaching the term to his work, he had a strong advocate in Tomoyuki Yamanobe, one of the most respected textile scholars of the time.
Working without a preparatory draft, Kubota considered each piece as a work that revealed itself during the fabrication process. The oversized format he used for some of his creations, such as the Mount Fuji series, are similar to a canvas, with the kimono then becoming a work of art.