The crape guild of Kioto is as large, and commercially as important, in this day, as the brocade guild, whose members rank first among manufacturers. All crape is woven in tans, or lengths of sixty Japanese shaku, two and a half shaku being equal to an English yard. On the loom this material is a thin, lustrous fabric, hardly heavier than the gauze on which kakemonos and fan mounts are painted. It is so smooth and glossy that one cannot discover the smoother warp and twisted woof threads, alternately tight and loose, which give it its crinkly surface. When finished, the web is plunged into a vat of boiling water, which shrinks the threads and ensures the wrinkled and lustreless surface. Once dried the tans are tied like skeins, and lying in heaps, look like so much unbleached muslin. Crape must be dyed in the piece, and stretched, while damp, by bracing it across with innumerable strips of bowed bamboo. In the bath the pieces shrink from one-third to one-half in width, and a full tenth in length, but the more they shrink the more cockled is the surface. When finished the tan may measure from seventeen to twenty-four yards in length, but weight and not measure determines its value, and the scales are used instead of the yard-stick.
KABE HABUTAI
While the Chinese weave only the original Canton crape, with its heavy woof and firmly twisted threads, the Japanese have produced a dozen kinds, each wrinkled, cockled, waved, and crinkled in different ways. The great Joshu district produces not as many kinds of crape as Kioto, and Nishijin’s looms are busier each year, weaving crapes as light and thin as gauze, or as heavy and soft as velvet; some costing only thirty or forty cents a yard, and others two and three dollars for an arm’s length. The soft, thick, heavily-ribbed kabe habutai, once kept for ceremonial gowns and the favorite gifts of the great, is most expensive, having heavier threads and larger cockles than other crapes, and never showing crease or wrinkle. Plain crape, or chirimen, differs as the fineness of thread and the closeness of weaving add to its weight. Ebisu chirimen might be called repoussé, from the scale-like convexities of its surface, and is a most fascinating fabric. Finest and most exquisite of all is the lustrous kinu chirimen, or crinkled silk, which shows only the finest lines and parallel ridgings marking its surface lengthwise. Used chiefly for the carelessly tied obi of the bath kimono, or as obishime, tied over the women’s heavy satin and brocade obis to keep their stiff folds in place, these stringy scarfs add a last artistic touch of color to a costume. Kinu chirimen shrinks half its width, but loses nothing in length in the bath, and a tan a yard wide ranges from eighteen to twenty-eight dollars in price. Kanoko chirimen is plain crape dotted over with knots or projections in different colors, a result arrived at by processes similar to those employed at Arimatsu for dyeing cotton goods.
CHIRIMEN
Yamamai, so little known outside the home market, is a most artistic fabric, roughly and loosely woven of the threads of the wild, mountain silk-worm, that is fed on oak-leaves. Yamamai has the natural yellow color of the cocoons, is considered both a cure and preventive of rheumatism, and is often worn at the command of foreign physicians. It is softer to the touch than the Chinese pongee, not being weighted with the clay dressing of Shantung pongees, while much heavier than the Indian tussores, all three of these fabrics being the product of the same wild oak-spinner.
EBISU CHIRIMEN
