Stories Clothes Tell - (Asian Voices) by Tatsuichi Horikiri

About the Book

This compelling social history tells the stories of ordinary people in modern Japan. Tatsuichi Horikiri spent a lifetime searching out old items of clothing and oral accounts to shed light on those who used these items. He illuminates not only the often desperate lives of thes...

Book Synopsis

Spanning decades of research, this compelling social history tells the stories of ordinary people in modern Japan. Tatsuichi Horikiri spent a lifetime searching out old items of clothing--ranging from everyday kimono, work clothes, uniforms, and futons to actor's costumes, diapers, hats, aprons, and bags. Simultaneously he collected oral history accounts to shed light on those who used these items. Horikiri reveals not only the difficult and sometimes desperate lives of these people, most from the lower strata in early twentieth-century Japan, he illuminates their hopes, aspirations, and human values. He also explores such topics as textile techniques, the history of fashion, and the ethnography of clothing and related cultural phenomena.

Having been wrongly accused and tortured by the Japanese military police in China during World War II, Horikiri takes a deeply empathetic view of all those who struggle--from peasants and coal miners to traveling salesmen and itinerant performers. This personal connection sets his account apart, giving his writing great power and immediacy. Students and scholars of Japanese history, as well those interested in material culture, labor history, and feminist history, will find this book deeply illuminating.

Review Quotes

"This work touched my heart as much as my head. It brilliantly captures the human spirit of working-class Japanese in the first half of the twentieth century: farmers, schoolgirls, laborers, miners, housewives, soldiers. Drawing on his massive collection of the threadbare clothes that people wore, Horikiri gives us thirty-one stories full of haunting sadness and dignified resilience along with his own trenchant observations about Japanese life and values. His reflections on war should be read by everyone." --James L. Huffman, Wittenberg University

"This is a fascinating exploration in social and cultural history. Through well-chosen, vividly described vignettes, it examines the meaning of fabric and clothing for those who fabricate these items, those who wear or use them, and those who observe the dress of others. A compassionate and compelling work." --Andrew Gordon, Harvard University

"This is a remarkably coherent translation of a fascinating book. Horikiri's narrative of clothing serves well as a new vision of peoples' history that conveys a tale of material culture at odds with the middle-class mythologies of modern Japan. Indeed, Horikiri's work is a recasting of the very notion of kokoro, which in this work serves as a highly valued trope for everyday humanity." --Christopher Gerteis, SOAS, University of London

"In The Stories Clothes Tell, Tatsuichi Horikiri puts readers in touch, almost literally, with the past experience of Japan's everyday people, or shomin. In a kaleidoscope of more than thirty short essays, each set around a different piece (or sometimes just a scrap) of clothing, Horikiri gathers together the 'whispers, ' as he puts it, of lives lived largely out of sight of Japan's upper classes. Thanks to Rieko Wagoner's fine and empathetic translation, readers outside Japan can now enter Horikiri's world--not of Japan's 'good old days' that never were, but the 'real old days' that might otherwise be lost to memory forever." --Andrew Barshay, University of California, Berkeley

About the Author

Tatsuichi Horikiri is an independent scholar at the Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History. Rieko Wagoner is principal lecturer in Japanese at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut.