As the most valuable of all materials, silk, was used by the aristocrats and by the military class, while the commoners had their cloth made of bast fibres such as asa (hemp), fuji (wisteria bark), kuzu (arrowroot), koozo (mulberry), or shina (Japanese lime). Gradually cotton production increased with the introduction of more efficient home-based spinning wheels and weaving looms. Hemp garments began to fall rapidly out of use during the Meiji era. One notable exception was cloth made from wisteria vines. Until the late Meiji, work clothes in the Shūchi area of Shizuoka prefecture were referred to as fujigimono (‘wisteria kimono’), woven from wild wisteria grown in the local mountains. 

Farmers, who ranked second in the social hierarchy, wore clothing made of durable, inexpensive materials with sleeves that afforded ease of movement. Their Kimonos began to be recycled and passed through families as heirlooms, usually worn until they were rags. 

Cotton came late to the north of Japan, so people could get hardly hold of it. Sashiko was a way of connecting worn out clothes and small pieces of cotton and piece them together into a quilted fabric, known as boro. As it would keep them warm, sashiko clothing was worn by all members of the lower working classes of Japanese society.

01 Artist: Kunichika Toyoharu (1835-1900) Artwork: 1874 – 3 images from the series Tozei Shomin Fuzoku Gacho (当世庶民風俗画帖). It reflects Japanese society and culture of the Meiji era, and is particularly concerned with the lives and customs of ordinary people.

02 Artist: Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) Artwork: 1843 – Thirty-six Immortals of Poetry: Mirror of Ethics for Girls, Woman in a blue and white turban seated at a looming machine and weaving.

03 unknown artist. Artwork: ca. 1900 – photo of a women known as Ohara-me, female peddler of firewood, living north of Kyoto.

04 Artist: Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839 – 1911) Artwork: ca. 1870, Portrait of a farmworker 

05 Artist: Kuniyoshi Utagawa (1798-1861) Artwork: 1843 – Thirty-six Immortals of Poetry: Mirror of Ethics for Girls, Woman in a blue and white turban seated at a looming machine and weaving