WS Journal 14 From Earth to Cloth: Workshop with Karamushi 2606

After a June filled with relentless rain, the sunny days returned.
With less water running through the ramie stalks, the fiber was a little tricky to strip.
In times like this, soaking them thoroughly in water is key.
The high temperature that day reached 34 degrees Celsius (93°F).
Beneath a vast, clear blue sky, the cicadas hummed, accompanied by the echoing calls of Japanese bush warblers and red-billed leiothrixes.
Yet, surrounded by rocky surfaces and trees, Takara-no-Niwa offered a cool breeze that would slip through from time to time.
And above all, there was the well water. Because the work involved touching cold water, we managed to get through the heat.

Our participants varied widely in age, gender, and background interests.
As one person shared with excitement: "In the morning it was a plant, and by evening it had become fabric."
The clothes we wear and the fabrics we use every day—
they were once plants, or perhaps animals, living lives of their own.

Experiencing that directly by moving our own hands and feet—seeing, touching, smelling, and feeling it with our whole bodies.
I feel that many are drawn to the workshop for precisely that magic.

The fabrics we usually see are displayed as flawless finished products, bathed in bright lights inside windowless buildings made of concrete and plastic.
Surrounded only by those forms, it is so easy to forget, or even lose sight of, what lies at the source.

What we wear on our bodies and use in our daily lives—
what exists before these things reach our hands?
If we trace the stream back to its origins, we find not only the people involved in production and distribution, but the material itself, its raw ingredients, and its life.
(Even synthetic fibers were, in the distant, far-off past, once life.)

If we forget that, something feels missing.
If we fail to realize that, the world feels somewhere distant.
I have a feeling like that.
Because it feels missing, we want more.
Because it feels distant, we can afford to neglect it, or even harm it.
Yet to do that is to distance, neglect, and harm the very self that exists within that world.

To reconnect.
To feel where the roots of our own lives lead.
To seek what lies beyond.

I continue this workshop hoping it can be one spark for that.
(Or to put it simply: I just really want to share the pure thrill and joy of it!)