To Dye For

In Okinawa, the legacy of revived-thanks to bingata is being the descendants of the textile tradition's original practitioners.

- By Yulia Denisyuk

An intricately patterned bingata kimono from artist Toma Chinen's Okinawa workshop; a shisa statue

AT CHINEN BINGATA LABORATORY on the western edge of Naha in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, the 10th-generation bingata artist Toma Chinen is leaning over a piece of fabric that depicts hibiscus flowers on a yellow canvas. In the brightly lit, airy space, stacked rows of colorful textiles are stretched to dry along the walls. At a long, narrow table, a woman carves an ornate design of geese and peonies into a stencil, using a rectangle of dried tofu as a cutting board. Another paints a koi fish in a medley of purple, blue, and pink, dipping her short, stubby brush into red pigment mixed with soy milk. The artisans' slow movements look like a meditative dance. Chinen explains that the two-to-three-month process, which includes masking parts of the textile with a rice-based resist-dye paste, has barely changed since the time of the Ryukyu Kingdom, the trading nation with its own language, customs, and culture that flourished in Okinawa for 450 years beginning in the 15th century.