 Hi everyone and thank you for joining us at the British Library online. I'm Leslie Downer. We're here to find out all about Japanese textile design books and their exquisite patterns. And we'll start with a wonderful film by Hamish Todd. Hamish is the head of East Asian collections here at the British Library and has been since 2010. He read Japanese at Cambridge and went to Japan in the early days of the jet scheme, as did I. He then lived and worked in Japan for several years as an English teacher and translator for Suntory, I gather. He joined the British Library in 1986 and has dedicated his career to curating, researching and developing the library's rich Japanese collections, making them accessible to as wide an audience as possible. He knows a huge amount about Japan and all things Japanese and he also blogs on the British Library's website, so do follow his fascinating blogs. So today he's going to share some of his knowledge about the wonderful pattern books in the British Library's collection. As you've heard, this project actually began as an exhibition, which was then prematurely closed down by lockdown. And so it's now to be a permanent online exhibition, all the more exciting that we can bring it back to life again. So first of all, it's really wonderful to see these books right here in front of me. They're marvelous, beautiful kind of colour illustrations. I'm very fortunate to be able to touch them, goodness, and the kind of intricacy of the painting. One thing this makes me think of straight away is, I think you said something about this being to do with fashion. But of course, here in the West, as you know, fashion is all to do with the cut of a garment and how it's put together. So how can these pattern books be to do with fashion? I mean, that's a very interesting point. I think it's worth bearing in mind that in Japan, the aesthetic was not about fitting items to the contour of the body. It was about the fabric. It was about the painting. It was about the design, the colours. So it was a completely different way of looking at what was fashion. The actual shape of the garments didn't change that quickly, certainly not as quickly as they do in the West. So really, I mean, we think of a kimono as something to wear, but to some extent it was, or maybe to quite a large extent, it was seen as a canvas almost, wasn't it, where the artist could paint? Yes, it was giving a whole range of messages to the viewer and from the wearer. There's that marvellous story that Saikaku writes about Kauru the courtesan who had this glorious piece of satin, I think, and she got artists to paint on it, then she got poets to write poetry on it, and then she thought, this is way too beautiful to hang on the wall. This has to be a kimono. So it's like the idea that hanging something on the wall is quite boring, but if you actually make it into something you can wear, then it goes from being a kind of two-dimensional flat thing to being, you know, a three-dimensional work of art, basically. I mean, that's part of the issue. I was explaining that kimono are normally displayed in that T-shape, so that you can see the whole pattern across the back. But it was worn, so it was intended to be worn, and movement and sound is all part of the aesthetic of the kimono, that wonderful noise that people make when they move along in a kimono. So in terms of the artists, was it as prestigious or more prestigious to be a designer of pattern books as to do, for example, woodblock prints? I mean, did people like Hokusai do these pattern books? It's interesting because we have to bear in mind these people were trying to earn a living, so I think that they would turn their hand to whatever was on offer. I don't think there was any shame in producing these pattern books when caught upon. Yeah, I mean, I got the impression that actually pattern books were, at one point, prestigious, and that people could make their name perhaps by doing pattern books. I think Morinobu did pattern books, didn't he? I gather. He did. He did a lot of pattern books, and various other artists, like Tsukinobu and people, but the trouble is that in many cases we don't actually know who the artist was. I want to ask whether there were also women artists, like Hokusai's daughter, but I suppose... There may well have been, but if we don't have the names, we don't know the gender, so speculation. Can you tell us a little bit more about the British Library's Japan collection? Are there lots more of these books besides the ones that you've shown us? There are, and I'm very pleased to say that we're still acquiring pattern books. It's part of the collection we're expanding, but they're within the context of Japanese language holdings of about 80,000 to 90,000 volumes, which cover manuscripts, printed books from the very beginnings of printing in Japan in the 8th century right the way through to the modern period. I must confess that to me the most interesting and perhaps important part of the collection are the pre-modern books, such as we see here today, and that's the thing that really interests me, but it is a living collection and we try to support contemporary research in a whole range of fields, given the budget that we have. So were these books much used? Are they well handled volumes? Well, I mean, I don't know if the camera can pick this up, but this one in the front, you can certainly see along the corners, people with rather grubby fingers have been using them. So as far as I know, in the Edo period, there were certain fabrics that, for example, only the women of the Shogun's castle could wear. There were certain fabrics that were only allowed to the women of the Imperial Palace, and there were lots of fabrics that, for example, towns women couldn't wear. So garments were kind of controlled by the Sumterly Law system. Is that reflected in the pattern books? That's a very good point. I mean, yes, there was an effort to control conspicuous consumption through these Sumterly Laws, which was mainly about hiding the discrepancies in wealth, that the merchant class who were actually in the traditional system, the lowest ranking part of society, had the most money, so that the government tried to control the appearance of wealth. But I think it's probably safe to say that people found ways around these laws. And, you know, you could have maybe an undergarment that had some of these forbidden fabrics. People were endlessly creative, I'm sure. So what about Onagata? What about the male actors of women's roles? I wonder if there were particular designs that they would have gone for? I think they would definitely have been among the leaders of a fashionable society and the sort of styles maybe that people admired on the stage, but whether they would actually want to dress like one in real life, I'm not so sure. I certainly don't know of any of our pattern books which are specifically designed for that. But Onagata, you know, they were almost a form of behaviour that people aspired to, women aspired to. You know, they learnt from Onagata how a lady was supposed to behave. So, yeah, very influential figures in many aspects of Japanese culture. Do put in your questions, if anybody has a question, do send them in and I shall pass them on to Hamish. So what about the consumers? For example, if you were an ordinary person, you could buy one of these pattern books and you could look at the kind of designs that a courtesan might wear. So it would be a little bit maybe like Vogue, do you think? Yeah, I think there are lots of different uses for these. As I said in the film, some of them are obviously practical in nature. They would have been taken by the Kimono merchant to his high-ranking clients. It wouldn't be expected to come to the shop, obviously. And they could go through and have a discussion and choose a design or a fabric in discussion with the Kimono merchant. Other people would go to the shop, flick through and maybe find something. Other people might, as you say, just like a fashion magazine today, enjoy looking at the pictures without ever intending or having the means to have a kimono made up. So I wonder how much they cost. I mean, do we have any idea at all or do we not know? I mean, were they cheap like Vogue or were they collector's items? It depends what you buy. Nowadays, for instance, you can go into a department store or look on a website and you can get a kimono for a couple of hundred pounds, but it'll be made out of an inferior fabric. Whereas if you go to the higher end, you're talking tens of thousands of pounds, if not more. I think the sky's the limit really. What about the books? I wonder how much they would cost. The books are not quite so expensive. It's vulgar to discuss money. We are still being able to acquire them even with our modest means, so you can pick up some of these quite cheaply. What about if you were a merchant's wife? That's what I meant. Oh, back in the day? Yeah, back in the day. We don't really have much evidence as to how much these cost. Again, some of them, these early ones were particularly intended that we know about were actually in shops and used by the merchants themselves rather than sold to the mass market. So you have the books there so that merchants can sell their wares, there so that merchants can advertise their wares, also there so that people designing kimonos maybe could get ideas? Will that be another story? That's absolutely true. Yes, and that goes for the Zuancho later as well. That was very specifically one of the reasons for creating those. You had these designs which anybody producing arts and crafts, including textiles, could use. It's quite difficult to match up a design with an actual kimono and say that was based on that. You can match themes perhaps, but not specific designs. What about the process once? I've gone into the shop and I've had a look at this kimono book and I've said, okay, I'd like this one. Is this part of your kind of knowledge of what would happen then? To be honest, no. No, right. One could imagine, presumably the merchant would then take that design to a dyer or an embroiderer and then who would then put it onto the silk and then it would all be stitched together. You could also make adjustments to the design, couldn't you? I don't like this particular bit of it. Could I please change it? I think it's probably worth saying you probably have a lot more knowledge about the actual wearing of kimono and the processes than I do from your experience. Yeah, we were going to talk about geisha a bit. Yes, that's true. Talking about the different sorts of kimono, the different sorts of people wear, I remember being in Kyoto and seeing Michael, the trainee geisha with their enormously lavish kimono with the long furisore, the long sleeves and then geisha who wear very modest kimono and then the Tayu who are the courtesans. There are still women who dress as Tayu. I think there were six or there were six at last counting who wear very, very spectacular kimono. The concept of kimono as being one thing, one kind of undiffering object seems to be completely wrong. I do wonder whether ordinary people would be able to get a pattern book with pictures of a Tayu's kimono. I wonder whether they'd be able to see that or would that be like seeing a Versace gown or something? Would it be like when you can see the fashionable clothes at London's Fashion Week but you wouldn't actually want to wear those crazy clothes yourself? Exactly. And we're talking about books here but of course you also have okioe prints, single sheet prints which had actors and courtesans depicted in them and they were comparatively cheap and people could buy one and put it on their wall or look at it. So that's the purpose isn't it in a way that if you can't afford to go to the pleasure quarters or if you can't afford to buy a fabulous kimono then you can get a picture of it instead. You said that kimono books kind of disappear or rather sorry pattern books disappear around what the 1920s. I wonder if is there any reason why they kind of fade away? Well I think it goes with perhaps the decline in the wearing of kimono as an everyday object. I think we see that men certainly during the Meiji period started to wear western clothes quite early on. I think perhaps in one of the pictures that we saw in the film you can see a train going through and if you look carefully in the background there are some men in kimono but with a bowler hat and it's a sign of the transition. Obviously for women the kimono was worn much longer but as I said in the film it gradually turns into not being an everyday garment but something for special occasions. So how do you think people would buy a kimono today? Was that again outside your field? Well you can look on the internet you can see things. You can go into a department store and there will be a range of kimono there but there are also high end specialist kimono shops where you would go and it would probably be a very similar consultation process to what we saw in the Edo period. But you'd need to be quite confident to do that I think, to know what you were about and to have the resources. What I learnt when I was living among geisha was that the geisha seemed to seem to require something like 36 kimonos a year. I mean people would also be buying new kimonos. I mean the budget you'd need as a geisha would be rather enormous because you have a different fabric each month which obviously fits the seasons. So that's 12 kimonos but then you need three different ones. You need one that you're wearing at the party one that is off at the cleaners and one in case somebody spills their drink on your kimono and you have to rush out and change it. The figure I had was something like five or ten thousand pounds for each kimono. So you need to have somebody that's funding you. A very rich patron. And presumably in the days of the courtesans if you didn't have a very rich patron there was very very little chance of ever paying back that debt that you initially had. But life as a geisha is obviously somewhat different today than it was in the past. I wonder whether, this is again just speculating I wonder whether geisha used pattern books. I don't know. I don't know. You've lived amongst, I was wondering whether you'd come across that. I never came across, no I never did. I never did. I think this is quite a kind of an unusual side of Japanese culture that hopefully for this exhibition it's become more kind of prevalent now. Hopefully lots of people are watching us at this minute and will discover the wonderful world of pattern books. I mean that's what I hope. I think they're fascinating. We've, with the help of the Great Britain-Susaka Foundation we've digitised these. They're online on our website. I think the link will be on your screens at the end of the film. And you can come and see the real objects. If you have a British library readers ticket you're very welcome to come in and look at them, study them, be inspired by them, go away and make your own kimono patterns. Who knows? Well I've certainly learnt a lot about Japan and kimono and fashion through learning all about these wonderful pattern books. I love the way it's so practical. It brings us close to how commerce operated and how real people really lived. Thank you very much. My absolute pleasure. And thank you very much everyone for joining us this evening and wishing you a lovely evening here from the British Library.