Tracing the History of Kogin in Hirosaki – Winter 2017, Vol.7
Ryo Okawa, whom I met last summer through a friend, was a remarkable man who poured his energy into developing local off-season industries — not only kogin-zashi. He was also a key figure who laid the groundwork for kogin-zashi’s revival from its long decline. Yet whenever I looked through books on the history of kogin-zashi, I found it strangely puzzling that Ryo Okawa was barely mentioned.
Related article: Ryo Okawa and Kogin-zashi – Summer 2017.
Last summer, when I was shown antique kogin-zashi pieces at the Okawa family home, they were tagged with the classification names that Ryo Okawa himself had assigned. It is also documented that Mr. Okawa was on staff from the founding of the Kimura Industrial Research Institute in 1932— the organisation that would later become the Hirosaki Kogin Research Institute. During his time as a contracted staff member, he moved from his home in present-day Hirakawa City to a rented house in central Hirosaki, even though he could have commuted from home. To me, this suggests how deeply committed he was to the work.
Mr. Okawa’s granddaughter, Keiko Okawa, who now looks after the present-day Okawa house, held a memorial exhibition seven years ago to mark the 130th anniversary of Ryo Okawa’s birth. Even this exhibition seemed to appear out of nowhere, with little explanation or context, so I had wanted to know the story behind it. Late last year I visited Keiko again and asked her about it.
Trained as a biologist, Keiko Okawa had been only a small child when her grandfather Ryo Okawa passed away. She had never spoken directly with him about off-season crafts or kogin-zashi — only heard about them from family and relatives.
A few years before the 130th-anniversary exhibition was decided, a letter from Bruno Taut to Ryo Okawa was found among her grandmother’s belongings. (In his famous book Rediscovering Japanese Beauty, Taut records his visit to Ryo Okawa.) Through her involvement with the Hirosaki organisation The Society to Cherish Kunio Maekawa’s Buildings, she also learned that Ryo Okawa had been a contracted staff member at the Kimura Industrial Research Institute. Motivated to trace and properly document her grandfather’s life and work, she began gathering materials and information.
Meanwhile, a local group was preparing to establish an organisation dedicated to preserving and making use of the Okawa family’s 400-year-old residence, along with the family’s legacy as one of the region’s leading agricultural households. And they approached Keiko about doing an exhibition around the 130th anniversary. Aware that the region’s historical way of life was already fading from memory, she decided this would be a good chance for people to come into contact with them directly, and agreed to open the house and the surviving heirlooms to visitors.
As if in synchrony with the memorial exhibition, new traces of Ryo Okawa’s footsteps came to light. Around this time, kogin-zashi was being featured in the media and local people were becoming more interested. One day, a local historian visited Keiko’s home to return a copy of the 2009 book The World of Old Cloth of Michinoku, and with it left a note. The magazine includes a famous photograph of women wearing kogin-zashi, said to date from the Meiji era. But the local historian said this photograph might not actually be from the Meiji period. Later, during the exhibition, neighbours recognised every woman in the photograph.
As it turned out, this photograph was taken on the grounds of the Okawa family residence. The barn visible in the background of this photograph appears in the foreground of the photograph above. It has since been torn down. The photo, it was learned, had been taken around 1937 by the central public hall of Hiraga Town (now Hirakawa City). At that time, Ryo Okawa was living in Hirosaki as a contracted staff member of the Kimura Industrial Research Institute. The photo session is believed to have been arranged at Mr. Okawa’s request, for a kogin-zashi exhibition.
Very similar photographs can be viewed in the Kokugakuin University Digital Museum.
The memorial exhibition also deepened Keiko’s commitment to her research. She is untangling the meaning of the heirlooms left at the house, discovering facts the family did not know, and uncovering inaccuracies in the accepted historical record. In order to pass these elements of local culture to the next generation, she continues to verify facts, gather materials and information, and refine her historical analysis.
Ryo Okawa and Naomichi Yokoshima
Keiko has heard from people who knew the Kimura Industrial Research Institute era that Naomichi Yokoshima and Ryo Okawa were on bad terms. Like Mr. Okawa, Yokoshima was on staff from the founding of the institute, and he later became the first director of the Hirosaki Kogin Research Institute. Mr. Okawa once aspired to be a painter; Yokoshima was a science-trained researcher. It is easy to imagine that the two men approached their work from very different perspectives.
In 1940, Ryo Okawa left the Kimura Industrial Research Institute and returned to his main residence in Hirakawa City, devoting the rest of his life to off-season crafts. He passed away in 1958 at the age of 77. Yokoshima, after staying in Yokohama from 1940 until the end of the war, returned to Hirosaki and revived the only surviving venture of the Kimura Industrial Research Institute, Aomori Homespun. In 1962, it was renamed the Hirosaki Kogin Research Institute, and the production and sale of kogin-zashi began in earnest.
The document above is an internal newsletter the Kimura Industrial Research Institute issued regularly during Ryo Okawa’s tenure. Among Ryo Okawa’s belongings, only this single issue remained. Currently, the only other known surviving issue is No. 41, preserved at the Japan Folk Crafts Museum.
My puzzle about Ryo Okawa is not likely to be solved any time soon. The perseverance of Keiko’s search, and the many materials she has gathered, strongly reminds me that the very survival of records relating to kogin-zashi — a craft that emerged among largely illiterate farming communities — feels almost miraculous, made possible only through the tireless efforts of those who devoted themselves to preserving and reconstructing its history.
Toward an “Off-season Crafts Museum”
Keiko, who continues to study the materials preserved in her home, is also exploring how best to preserve them and the residence itself. She is preparing to open the site eventually as an “Off-season Crafts Museum” for public visit. At Ryo Okawa’s Off-season Crafts Research Institute, products other than kogin-zashi were produced there as well — interior items and bags decorated with origera ornaments, Tsugaru dolls made from a local limestone called amaishi — and these are displayed at the house alongside photographs of the original craftspeople.
The origera was the local farmer’s raincoat. In this region, men wove origera and women stitched kogin, and they exchanged these as gifts upon marriage.
Drawing new designs from the forms of rural living and creating a new cultural industry, Ryo Okawa’s achievements are regarded as the earliest example of off-season crafts in Tohoku. Even after fifty years, the products he created have lost none of their appeal, and Keiko carefully preserves them in her home.
About the Off-season Crafts Museum (in preparation)
The Okawa family’s thatched home — said to be 400 years old — and the many off-season craft pieces left by Ryo Okawa are shown to visitors upon request.
TEL/FAX: 0172-44-3429
E-mail: keiko.okawa@gmail.com
〒036-0101 Daikoji Ichi-Takimoto 105, Hirakawa City, Aomori Prefecture
