Kaizawa Yukiko on 50 years of weaving Ainu 'attus' fabric
2 Video Views·Jan 29, 2025
Kaizawa Yukiko has more than 60 years' experience in weaving 'attus', a kind of fabric made from tree bark fibre. She dyes the 'attus', which is made from elm, with flowers and plants that grow locally like marigolds, madder and walnuts.
She sometimes works more than 12 hours a day but says, "it's no hardship because I love weaving". The more she weaves, the more she wants to create good items, and she says her work is a "life-long study".
Kaizawa has won many awards, including recognition as "an excellent craftswoman" by The Ainu Association of Hokkaido in 2011. More recently in November 2023 she was awarded The Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government.
My name is Yukiko Kaizawa.
I've been weaving for more than 60 years.
I love this job and I'm doing my best.
I've been weaving since I was a child.
But I started weaving when I was 19.
This is a boat.
We used to weave the same way as we do now.
But we had to pay for the yarn.
So we made a ball of yarn and paid for it.
I'm a normal person, but everyone is waiting for me.
There aren't enough people, so people are waiting for me.
This is a kimono obi.
I make about 12 of them a year.
I've been wearing this for a long time.
It's hard to wear.
This is called a takado.
I only wear one or two of them.
I don't have to make a lot of them.
Some people need a lot of obi.
Shiranui leather is very rough.
It's hard to make clothes or kimonos with it.
The material of this leather is soft.
It's very sticky.
It's often used for ethnic costumes.
I can't pick this tree in August.
I can't pick it.
At the end of June or the beginning of May,
when the water is rising from the ground,
I pick the leather.
I can't pick anything other than that time.
I pick this rough leather.
Then it becomes a slippery leather.
If you boil it for a few hours,
it becomes soft.
Soak it in water and make it thin like this.
And then I cut it into threads for the first time.
It takes about 90% of the whole process to make a thread.
And when you start folding it,
it goes a little bit.
It goes a little bit.
It's the best way.
It's very hard.
It's very hard to hold the thread and tie it evenly.
It doesn't take that long to fold.
It's very hard to make a thread.
It takes 5 or 6 days to fold.
It takes many days to make a thread.
I understand.
It's not just about concentration.
It's very important to make a thread.
Even if you tie it in one way,
if you tie it in a strange way,
it won't open and it will be full of garbage.
So you have to do it while stroking it
so that you can rub your hands cleanly.
And this is also alive.
There are times when it is very easy to fold
and times when it is very difficult to fold.
When it's hard to fold,
if you are an amateur,
it's not easy to fold.
It's hard for me to fold, too.
There are times when I can't help it.
It's very difficult,
so it's not something you can learn easily.
That's why I can't fold a lot.
If it's easy, I can fold a lot.
It's difficult, so I can't fold a lot.
I want to tell people that
I want to keep doing my best
so that this weaving will never run out.
I have a short future,
so I want many young people to work hard.