Japan · Basketry; Palm-fiber hat weaving; Okinawan heritage
アダン葉帽子 (Adan-ba bōshi)
Adan-leaf hats are hats plaited from split, boiled and sun-bleached leaves of adan (Pandanus odoratissimus), the screw pine of Okinawa's shorelines. From the late Meiji period they grew into an export industry. In the 1910s adan hats were counted with brown sugar and awamori as one of Okinawa's three great products. More than ten hat companies operated, and about 30,000 people, mostly women and girls working at home, did the weaving (bōshi kumā). The bleaching and weaving method is credited to 片山徳次郎 (Katayama Tokujirō), a merchant from Kagoshima. The trade collapsed when wild leaf supply ran short, when cheaper paper-yarn ('genrō') hats replaced it, and when the war came. By the 21st century only a handful of elderly weavers, notably on Ie Island, still knew the technique. In 2011 糸数弓子 (Itokazu Yumiko) of Ginowan learned of the hats. Her grandfather's keepsake hat had been woven by her grandmother, and she traveled with a five-month-old baby to Ie Island to learn from 大城ナツ (Ōshiro Natsu). She studied with her for about six months. She now weaves, teaches public courses, and has trained a new generation of makers. Among those she trained, 比嘉聡子 (Higa Satoko), who studied with her from 2016–17, now runs the Takonokimochi workshop and its 'Bōshi Kumā school' at Okinawa Kōgei no Mori in Tomigusuku.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not inscribed. No national or prefectural designation identified
The koto (琴/箏) is Japan's national instrument — a 13-stringed zither 180cm in length produced from paulownia (桐 kiri) wood.
Urushi-kaki (漆掻き — lacquer scraping) is the practice of harvesting urushi sap from the Toxicodendron vernicifluum lacquer tree — the raw material for all Japanese lacquerware (CRAFT-0460, 0468, 0471).
Bingata (紅型 — crimson/abundant pattern) is the royal court textile dyeing tradition of Okinawa (formerly Ryukyu Kingdom) — the only Japanese regional dyeing tradition with a distinct non-mainland origin: Bingata reflects the Ryukyu…
Ōshima Tsumugi (大島紬) is the luxury silk weaving tradition of Amami Oshima Island, Kagoshima Prefecture — the most expensive silk textile in Japan and one of the most technically complex textile traditions in the world.
Bunraku (文楽) is Japan's traditional puppet theater — UNESCO inscribed in 2003 — using puppets operated by three visible puppeteers per puppet: the omozukai (主遣い) operates the head and right hand, the hidarizukai (左遣い) operates the left…
The lathe-turning and hand-painting of kokeshi, limbless wooden dolls with a cylindrical body and round head, made by kijishi — woodturners of Japan's Tohoku region who otherwise produced bowls, trays, and household utensils — who began…
The pit-loom weaving of striped cotton cloth by male weavers of Mogadishu and the adjacent Benaadir coastal region of southern Somalia, a textile tradition documented continuously from at least the early 14th century to the present.
The weaving of baskets and brooms from quilineja (Luzuriaga radicans), a fine-rooted evergreen climbing vine native to Chile and Argentina, harvested by Chiloé artisans deep in the archipelago's forests, where they seek out the plant…
An academically documented and exceptionally rare goat-hair weaving technique used by the Hadendoa (also Hedendoa/Hedendowa), a Beja tribal group of eastern Sudan traditionally inhabiting the region between the Nile and the Red Sea from…
The preparation, preservation, and elaborate ceremonial wrapping of xeedho, a traditional wedding gift ensemble prepared exclusively by the bride's mother and female relatives across Djibouti's Afar, Somali, and wider Somali-diaspora…
The plaiting (kunti) of young palm tree leaves, reeds, grass, and sorghum stalks into an exceptionally diverse range of functional and decorative household objects by women of the Nara people, a small (approximately 1.5% of national…
The hand-weaving of ilala palm fiber into distinctively formed baskets -- a square woven base opening into a wide round rim -- by Tonga women of Zambia's Southern Province, near the Zambezi River.