Japan · Textile / Weaving / Bast Fiber and Ikat
八重山上布 (Yaeyama Jōfu)
Yaeyama jōfu (八重山上布) is a fine ramie cloth from Ishigaki and Taketomi in the Yaeyama Islands, Japan's far southwest. It is famous for two things. The first is kuru (紅露, a wild yam, Dioscorea cirrhosa, whose northern limit is Ishigaki and Iriomote): its concentrated juice is rubbed onto the yarn with a bamboo brush to print ikat patterns (suri-komi nassen), a method no other Okinawan textile uses. The second is umi-zarashi, sea bleaching: the woven cloth is floated in the shallows of the sea to whiten the ramie and fix the printed color. Ramie weaving on the islands is attested by 1477, when shipwrecked Koreans on Yonaguni described it. Under Satsuma's control of Ryukyu, the islands' poll tax required women aged 15 to 50 to deliver ramie cloth: white kōnō-fu, and goyōfu woven exactly to pattern drawings (mīzu) sent from Shuri. That pressure refined the technique. After the tax was abolished in 1903, rubbed-dye printing on the ayatsuburu warp frame was devised and became the dominant method. Hand-tied (kukuri) kasuri was later revived by Arakaki Sachiko, a Living National Treasure since 2024.
Risk level: Endangered · Not inscribed. METI Traditional Craft Product (designated 11 April 1989). Living National Treasure for 'Yaeyama Jōfu': Arakaki Sachiko (2024)
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