Futa-ai

This collection gives an impression of waking up in a morning haze. The scenery looks vague from the distance but it becomes clear and the faint texture turns into a strong existence as we approach. When the trees appear from behind the haze, we realize that we are here.

In ancient Japan, crimson color of the safflower was called “kure-no-ai.” The nature produces all the colors. Sometimes the nature cleverly hides the colors. We gained colors from the nature from ancient times. We dyed cloth with dyes extracted from nature. Unlike pigments that are painted on the surface, dyes soak into the core over time. I have a wish that I want to be soaked into one’s heart: to enrich and bear new perspectives through encounters, just like layering kure-no-ai (safflower crimson) and ai (indigo) to replace the expensive gromwell root to make the purple color with richer hue called “ futa-ai.” I aimed to connect the hearts of people living in two remote places by overlapping two "ai"s from northern and southern regions. Like the warp and the woof that make a piece of cloth, I wish to weave and connect the hearts of people: to start from uniting he hearts of Japanese and then to the world and bring peace to the world someday. The collection is looking towards the future, hoping that my wish will pass the time and space and reach the future.

Safflower, with gratitude to the people that I met in Yamagata on August 15th: the anniversary of the end of the Pacific War.