The origin of the kimono (the origin of the Japanese kimono)

The origin of the kimono (the origin of the Japanese kimono)

The kimono is a traditional Japanese clothing, so how did it come about?

Japan claims to be a Yamato nation in order to distinguish foreign things. They call foreign food “foreign food”, their local traditional food “harmonious food”, foreign houses “foreign rooms”, their local houses “harmonious rooms”, foreign The clothes of the people are called “Western clothes”, and the local clothes are called “kimono”. This is where the term “kimono” comes from.

The emergence of kimono can be traced back to the Kofun era in Japan, which is the Three Kingdoms period in China. At that time, the Japanese had no concept of clothing. In “Wei Zheng Japanese Biography”, it is recorded that the Japanese dressed at that time: “A pair of cloth was used, with a hole in the middle, and no tailoring was needed.” It can be seen that Japan did not have clothing technology at that time. Textile and garment technology was passed on to the Japanese. At this time, Japanese clothing began to appear, because most of the craftsmen who taught the Japanese to weave and make clothes came from Emperor Wu of Liang in the south at that time.

During the Nara period, that is, the Tang Dynasty in China. Japan began to send envoys from the Tang Dynasty to study on a large scale, and brought back the = clothing style of the Tang Dynasty. Because of the gorgeous style of Tang Dynasty clothing, Japan began to promote the style of Tang Dynasty clothing on a large scale. In the following hundreds of years, kimonos retained the basic clothing of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and continued to add their own local things online.

Until the Edo period, which is the Ming Dynasty in China. The style of kimono is more folk. The kimono, which was originally made of silk, gradually became cotton and linen, and the Chinese elements in the style gradually faded, and the belt and cuffs became narrower.

In the Meiji Restoration era, a large number of western clothing began to enter Japan, and Japanese kimonos were gradually replaced. Now, kimono is basically a formal occasion or festival dress in Japan.