When the cultural history of the Edo period is studied, it is all too easy to recite the above historical facts without fully appreciating that at this time in the 18th century, even in Europe, this kind of grass root fashion movement had not appeared, whereas in the later 17th century Japan, townspeople had already discovered the value of the “newest,” and they were thoroughly enjoying fashion trends. A book, Onna Chohoki (Women’s Treasury) published in 1692 describes as follows: “Urban manners change with the passage of time, and as for popular pattern dyeing, all go out of style in five or eight years’ time.”*5 Of course, with our seasonal fashions, the modern reader may find “five or eight years” as rather slow, but for the period, it was an epoch-making and completely new way of living for the large numbers of townspeople caught up in the excitement and actively following the latest trends. In essence, even though the timescale is longer, we see an infant consumer society that will grow in to our present era; there is very little difference between now and then. Mid-17th century Kyoto was the birthplace of this movement, and there is no doubt that with its spread to other urban areas, Japan can rightfully claim to be the forerunner of the modern world of fashion.

※5.This description is found in “Matters concerning clothes and dyeing” in Volume 1. The book is reprinted in Gendai Kyoyo Bunko 1507 Onna Chohoki, Nan Chohoki(Women’s Treasury and Men’s Treasury) revised and annotated by Nagatomo Chiyoji (Shakai Shisosha, 1993).

Such an early flowering of popular fashion culture is not the only aspect worthy of mention; the sheer brilliant expressiveness of monyo was also exceptional. The whole area of a kimono became a canvas for the artist, and versatile monyo comparable with pictures were created. Admittedly even though these heart-breakingly beautiful kimono were limited to the very wealthiest of society, it was not uncommon to see people wearing these extraordinary designs on their everyday clothes. When viewing other world cultures of that time, the existence of such a clothing and fashion culture was extremely unusual. For people from overseas who have not grown up with the many and varied patterns commonly found on kimonos, monyo might appear as something that does not easily combine with ordinary clothing and accessories. In 1992, a Los Angeles museum held a much acclaimed exhibition displaying a collection of the finest kosode of the Edo period. US researchers of Japanese culture entitled the exhibition “When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan”, and the term fashion in this context can be limited to clothing fashion. They intuitively knew that the monyo of kimono are totally different from the patterns, designs, and ornamentation found on Western clothes; monyo are without doubt art. In a Western sense, it is difficult to connect art and fashion (of course the word fashion can be replaced with trends, meaning a movement among the masses), but in the Japanese culture of the Edo period art and fashion existed as one entity. The researchers were fascinated by this point, and explored its enormous potential. The remaining kosode of the Edo period that we can see in museums and art galleries are just a tiny sampling of those actually made and worn. It is impossible for us to imagine nowadays the sheer volume of monyo manufactured in the Edo period to enrich the lives and excite the senses of ordinary people. No matter how much the Edo Shogunate attempted to prohibit luxury and extravagance, townspeople continued producing monyo as if to say, “drawer-fodder is life-fodder,” and kept on consuming and playing with fashion and “novelty.” The streets of Edo, Kyoto and other towns must have presented a magnificent and spectacular kaleidoscope of color to delight the eye of the passerby.

The profound depth of Japan’s monyo lies at the boundary where free play and flow in design meets the formal structure of tradition, and gives rise to stunning art as exemplified in the Tokyo National Museum’s national treasure, the renowned Heian period “Tebako (cosmetic box) made of maki-e lacquer and mother-of-pearl inlay.” Oxcart wheels half-submerged in a flowing stream are the inspiration for monyo design covering every surface of the box’s exterior. This monyo also appears painted on fusuma or sliding doors, and crops up as a decoration motif in furniture, and of course, as a motif in kosode. The artist pays no attention to accurately depicting a stream. Rather the stream meanders and playfully swirls, turning into geometric figures, or blending with a plant motif; its expression is unrestricted. The wheels too are equally treated and are not simply round; they describe curved lines like a stream, and some of them evolve into squares. Every single motif is dancing and free.

The subject matter of monyo is drawn from every aspect of life; nothing is too grand or humble, inspiration is as likely to come from banal everyday objects, as it is from heavenly celestial phenomena. Monyo literally consumed the world, and all things in nature were regarded as being suitable as a motif. Inspiration was even found in old folk tales, fables, Chinese poems, and 31-syllable Japanese tanka poems; new monyo were invented and born tumbling one after another into a world eager to welcome them with open arms. All monyo transcend their eras and by taking flight escape the confines of a simple genre and freely inhabit a thousand decorative spaces. Especially, in the Edo period, a fertile ground for decoration ready to accept the magnificent flowering of monyo − a classic example is the kosode of the Edo period − was being cultivated among a sophisticated populace with a deep knowledge and appreciation of design, and the desire to incorporate monyo into every aspect of their daily life.

With the dramatic birth of the Meiji period, the elegant never-ending world surrounding monyo was seen to be transient and suddenly collapsed. The reasons were not simply limited to the violent upheavals marking the end of an insular era or the painful adaptation to modernization with the increasing policy of Europeanization. In the book Awakening Japan: The Diary of a German Doctor, written by Erwin Bälz (1849 ‒ 1913), who was invited to Japan in 1876 as a lecturer at the Tokyo Medical School, the author observed: “Modern Japanese people no longer want to know anything about their own past. On the contrary, well-educated people are even ashamed of their past.”*6 The fact that the better-educated a person was, the more they turned their back on centuries of Japanese traditions and culture was extremely serious for the health of society. Bälz was not alone in his observations, every foreign specialist in the employ of the new Government also reported their concerns and this sense of impending crisis. Before their eyes, Japanese people were busily abandoning and burying their unique culture with their own hands; these foreigners in their diaries and letters unanimously noted their regret at this tragic denial of tradition.*7

Against such a tumultuous background, the reader may wonder “Did the world of monyo shatter into a thousand pieces with the abrupt arrival of modern times?” Fortunately, the answer is no; it did not collapse and it did not fade away, rather it flew just a short distance to the fields of “crafts” and “tradition,” where it has been quietly living for over a century. Obviously the opportunities to feel its significance and essence have sharply declined, but the thread of life of monyo has been tightly spun, and it is certainly not decaying, more hibernating like a butterfly waiting for the spring to come.

Yuzen printing, even in the later Edo period, had been losing popularity and was no longer at very center stage of fashion, but today this technique allowing the freest expression of “color and shape” has revived thanks to the introduction of chemical dyes and invention of a style of kata-yuzen (stencil-dyed). With this revival, the star image of Miyazaki Yuzen is once more in the ascendant. It is undeniable that after 1955, along with a fall in the demand for kimono, monyo for yuzen printing is losing ground, but it might be the destiny of yuzen printing to help revive and take the first steps of the return to the origin of monyo.

※6.An article on October 25, 1876. Erwin Bälz (1849 ‒ 1913) came to Japan in June 1876, and returned to Germany in 1905. Refer to Awakening Japan: The Diary of a German Doctor edited by Toku Bälz and translated into Japanese by Suganuma Ryutaro (Iwanami Bunko, 1979).
※7.Refer to Yukishi Yo no Omokage (Vestiges of Past Worlds) by Watanabe Kyoji (Heibonsha Library, 2005).