# History of Kimono: The Edo Period ## Highlights ### id263564489 requiring elites to maintain two residences is burdensome > With the policy of *sankin-koutai*, daimyo had to maintain two residences--one in Edo, the capital, and the other in their feudal domain--and every other year, they would have to move their entire entourage to the capital. The vast amounts of money and effort required for a daimyo to keep both residences was meant to keep them from amassing enough power and wealth to start an uprising (and the requirement that the daimyo's primary wife and first son had to maintain permanent residence in Edo helped keep them in check as well). The influx of wealth into Edo and into the towns along the way where the daimyo's processions would stop to restock meant that the merchant class now had enough wealth to patronize the arts, as well. Edo Period merchants drove the demand for elegant kimono, the traditional display of power and wealth in Japan, and patronized other arts as well, both old and new. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr217fnnhxmtegfq6eqhe1g6) ### id263564723 signaling status is expensive and can lead to wealth transfers > The Shogunate passed many laws regulating the dress of the lower classes in response, however, and one law was the forbidding of the dapple tie-dye technique (*kanoko shibori*) to members of the lower classes (namely merchants). The technique was incredibly labor-intensive, and thus *kanoko shibori kosode* were very expensive. Such an ostentatious show of wealth displeased the reigning samurai, who had to give up more and more of their wealth to these nouveaux riches merchants with every passing year. Of course, making something illegal rarely stops it from happening, and the design of *kanoko* was so popular that a way of getting around the law was quickly devised. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr219f3a3cdhkdmakmbepwar) ### id263565245 fashion always changes > Fashion is something which, by definition, is always changing. Now, with the demands of the merchants and the new techniques available--not to mention the challenges posed by the Sumptuary Laws the government would pass every so often--styles of clothing *did* change, over months and years rather than over centuries. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr21c6yg40fqmx25d3mw1vhb) ### id263565312 Japanese children's fashion differs from adults > a traditional belief in Japan was that children's body temperature was higher than an adults, which made them more susceptible to fevers. Children's sleeves were thus open in the back, and much larger, to improve ventilation and help keep children's temperatures regulated. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr21dmwqdbwxp7q69j6t062x) ### id263565579 stage costumes are exaggerated > Just like today's world of actors and entertainers, kabuki stars wore designer fashion, and their stage outfits were elaborate costume depictions of the haute couture of the day. Being stage costumes, they had to be larger-than-life versions of reality, to allow people at the back of the theatre to see the designs clearly. This fashion of wider *obi* was picked up by townswomen, which meant that kabuki actors had to wear even wider *obi*, which resulted in women wearing even wider *obi*, et cetera, until women of the middle Edo Period were wearing foot-wide obi. The expanding dimensions of the sleeves and *obi* also prompted a lengthening of the *kosode* as well, so that the hem trailed behind the wearer like a train, harkening back to the decadent *juunihitoe* while also giving kimono makers more area to embellish--especially necessary now that the wide *obi* was covering so much of the middle of the *kosode*, prompting more attention to be paid to decorating the bottom half, rather than painting a large-scale continuous pattern over the shoulder and sweeping down to the hem. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr21ht732ehqarea8kvg8e4h) ### id263568387 fashion responds to socioeconomic factors > • While the power was held at the top of the social order by samurai, the money was held at the very bottom, by the merchant class. This influx of money into the cities spurred a full-blown modern fashion industry > • Demanding city-dwellers and actors in need of haute couture fashion kept encouraging new trends, such as wider *obi* and longer *kosode* sleeves > • Sumptuary laws passed by the Shogunate provide external pressure on the fashion world, causing kimono to evolve with the times > • Kimono structure reaches its modern form in the mid-Edo Period, and fashion from this time continues to influence current kimono wearing. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr21qgqzncc7b7kphs5bbgsh)