Mishima Pass in Kai Province (Kōshū Mishima-goe)

Catalog note / 解説

Textiles graced with vertical stripes, made by alternating warp thread colors, were imported as trade goods beginning in the fifteenth century. Particularly influential for commoners' clothing were vertically striped cotton tozan fabrics made in India and brought to Japan by Dutch trade ships during the early Edo period. The wealthy elite monopolized the first of these exotic textiles, with their delicate, narrow vertical stripes, but as soon as the production of fabrics imitating tozan stripes began in central Japan, demand for them quickly spread among commoners. During the late Edo period, cotton fabrics woven in patterns of narrow vertical stripes were all the rage: townsmen and women s…