Photos of the production process for making bashofu
These are pictures of bashofu available online through the Digital museum of Naha City Museum of History.
The pictures present images of steps of the bashofu production process, such as scraping of the fibre, yarn making and weaving banana-fibre yarn into cloth.
Period: prior to World War II ～ 1950.
Please follow the procedure below to see the photos:
Copy the following words in Japanese (meaning bashofu) ☞ 芭蕉布
Put them in the blanc space in the grey square
Press the Enter key on your dashboard
19 photos showing part of the production process are presented.
Period: 1965～1969.
Place: Kijoka (Ogimi Village, Okinawa Main Island, Japan).
These photos are taken by Katrien Hendrickx between June and November 2000.
Location: former Weaving & Dyeing Atelier Banananesia (Yomitan Village, Okinawa Main Island, Japan)
The weaver of this workshop asked to never photograph his face; the person photographed is the creator of this website (at the time).
These photos are taken by Katrien Hendrickx on December 12 & 13, 2001.
Location: Iriomote Island (also Iriomotejima, one of the Yaeyama Islands, Japan)
These photos are taken by Katrien Hendrickx in April 2003. They show Tadao Nakamura, a male weaver of basho yarn in his atelier.
Location: former Tsumugi no Kan, Ushuku, Kasari-cho, Kagoshima prefecture, Japan.
Tadao Nakamura showed how he extracted fibre from the raw material itobasho and wove it into cloth. For the warp, he used cotton yarn. I received young itobasho plants to plant in my field on Okinawa Main Island.