Lecture: Bashōfu: Japan’s Folk Craft Movement and the Construction of a New Okinawa

From the time of his first visit to Okinawa in 1938, YANAGI Sōetsu, founder of Japan’s Folk Craft (Mingei) Movement, promoted an image of bashōfu (cloth made from the fiber-banana ) as emblematic of an essentialized, idyllic and homogeneous Okinawan culture. Yanagi’s view of Okinawa as a “tropical country,” a southern island paradise, became the theme of the islands’ tourism industry after Japan’s defeat in 1945.

Since the 16th century, bashōfu has clothed the people of the Ryukyu archipelago, from Ryukyu’s kings to its poorest villagers. Production and use of the cloth persists today. Through the intervention of Yanagi and his colleagues, the Mingei view of Okinawa has shaped an image of the islands that came to be held by both Okinawans and Mainland Japanese. This lecture examines bashōfu as one medium through which members of the Mingei Movement and other outsiders, and through them, Okinawans themselves, have defined Okinawan identity.

Dr. Amanda Mayer Stinchecum is an independent scholar specializing in the history of Ryukyu/Okinawa. She focuses on cultural and economic history, issues of marginalization, tourism development, and identity as viewed through the medium of textile and clothing production, technology, design, and use.