Caveat Credentials: for sarahbellem

[gurdymonkey]

Sit down children and I will tell you a story.

It begins awhile back when a very nice man turned up over on the Tousando board. He belonged to a non- SCA group and was posing questions regarding the clothing styles of the early Edo (1603-1868) period (1603-1868).

Submitted for consideration was a photo of him dressed in Edo style kataginu kamishimo.

I remember thinking, "That seems awfully late for early to mid 17th century, " and turned to Liza Dalby's
Kimono: Fashioning Culture. It states the following: 
"The upper section, kataginu, was a vestlike affair with whalebone stays stretching the material at the shoulder into stiff wings of fabric. Anything that has ever been said about the use of shoulder pads to project an image of authority in the West must apply in tripicate to the kataginu."
"This set of wings developed from a formal crested court robe from which the wide sleeves had been removed, perhaps by an impatient general in the field. The sleeveless crested garment then grew across the width of the shoulders, incorporating the whalebone stiffener in the 1750s......" (Dalby p. 50)

OK, so at least my memory of what I'd read was right. Still, I had been harping on the usefulness of genre paintings in research for this sort of thing and decided to see what I could find.
Which leads us to the Okuni Kabuki screen in the Kyoto National Museum collection. The museum dates the screen to the 17th century, some time after 1603:
http://www.kyohaku.go.jp/eng/syuzou/meihin/kaiga/kinsei/item05.html

Now, look at this detail. There's Okuni dancing with her sword. At the left of the stage is an audience member in a dark kataginu kamishimo with stiffened shoulders a good 50 years (or more) earlier than Dalby says he should be there. I look at the styles the women in the audience are wearing. I'm seeing narrow, front tied obi. If I had to ballpark the date of this painting, I'd push it a little earlier, because wider obi were starting to become fashionable by the 1680s:


Now, fast forward to March of this year and a visit to San Francisco's Asian Art Museum. The Asian rotates paintings and textiles on display, partly to maximize display space, partly to save fragile art from over exposure to light. On this visit, they had a magnificent screen dated to 1650 showing scenes of horse racing. "Palace and Horse Race at Kamo Shrine" c. 1615-1650, early Edo period, Brundage Collection

The shot's a bit fuzzy, but you can see the pleats in the shoulders of the kataginu on the seated man facing the viewer in this detail. In the shot below, the spectators on the rail are not so cutting edge in their fashions - the kataginu on these men are based on the earlier style minus the bones.



Oh, and about those bones, what about bamboo? I admit I have not taken the next step on this, but it just makes sense to me. It's cheap, it's plentiful, and it'll do the job.

Ms. Dalby's has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford. She is probably best known as "the American Geisha" - while working on her thesis, she was invited to accompany geiko at their work in an unprecedented fashion.

My credentials?  I'm a hobbyist with internet access.

The difference? Focus. Ms. Dalby started learning about kimono when she had to wear them, specifically, the sort of kimono worn by geiko and maiko as part of their occupation. I started learning about pre-Edo period Japanese clothing as part of my activities in the SCA.  Men's garments are not the primary focus for either of us, however, I do get questions on men's pre-Edo dress often enough that I will write, "Gee, I don't know, let me see what I can find out," which is how I found 17th century stiffened kataginu in the first place.

Does this mean Ms. Dalby's book is useless? No, of course not. It's a very good overview of the evolution of the kimono from clothing to cultural icon. It contains an extremely useful examination (in English!) of the notes prepared by Minamoto Masasuke on "Colors of a Court Lady's Dress" from about 1150 CE, written to advise a newly ascendent Empress Tashi.

All it means is that it never hurts to go back and look at something. It never hurts to ask a question.

And on that note, I'm going to go have some oatmeal and work on Saonji no Spike's kariginu.

Comments

[kass-rants.livejournal.com]

Amen. Experts aren't ominscient. There is always more to learn. Plus Dalby's expertise is in anthropology, not the history of clothing.

Experts are often the first to admit how little they know. And they are often delighted to learn something new about their subject. It's so easy to get stuck in the details and miss stuff like a stiffened kataginu in the 17th century.

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

My point precisely. I do NOT want to trash Ms. Dalby's work, because you and I both know that KFC is a very useful volume and her other writing has been well worth reading. I was asked, "What would a samurai be wearing in say, about 1620 to 1650?" so I went looking and found something I didn't expect to find.

Aren't surprises fun?