From the early 17th century to the late 19th century, Japan lived in a self-imposed seclusion that lasted nearly three hundred years. This was the Edo period, inaugurated by Tokugawa Ieyasu (whose fictionalized counterpart, Lord Toranaga, anchors the groundbreaking drama series Shōgun). Cut off from much of the outside world and enjoying an unprecedented stretch of peace, Japan turned inward, and a distinctly urban, merchant-class culture flourished in its cities. Lafcadio Hearn, the Greek-born writer who arrived in Japan in 1890, was among the first Westerners to record how thoroughly the country was steeped in a single color. As he famously wrote of his first impressions of Yokohama:
”The first of all the first impressions is that of a color — a dark, soft, vivid blue, pervading everything… the blue of the vapors of the morning, the blue of the roofs, the blue of the little shop-curtains, the blue of the workmen's robes." — Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
That impression was no accident. The surviving textiles of the Edo period — firemen's hikeshi-banten, futon covers, peasants' work jackets, merchants' noren — come down to us in countless shades of indigo. Nearly all of them were dyed with sukumo (蒅): fermented indigo leaves from the Tokushima region on the island of Shikoku. The technique is documented as far back as the 14th century and reached its height under the patronage of the Awa domain. Indigo (Polygonum tinctorium) was harvested in summer, dried, and then composted in special rooms for three to four months, turned and watered by hand. The result was a dark, earthy, crumbly compost which was then shipped to dyers in the great cities.
There, the dyers combined sukumo (蒅) with sake, limestone powder, and wood-ash lye in underground vats, coaxing a second fermentation to life. From these vats came the crisp, luminous blue that the world would one day call Japan Blue. Indigo dyeing was, at its peak, one of the largest industries of the Edo period — literally the color that dyed an era.
The decline came in stages. After Indian natural indigo began reaching Japan in larger quantities, and especially after a German chemist, Adolf von Baeyer, synthesized indigo in 1880 (with industrial production following by the 1890s), demand for sukumo collapsed almost overnight. By the mid-twentieth century, the craft had come close to extinction, preserved by only a handful of Tokushima families — the aishi (藍師)— who kept the fermenting rooms alive. Today a younger generation of indigo enthusiasts studies under them, determined to carry the tradition forward.
The "Blue City of Edo" that so captivated Hearn reaches us through another medium as well: ukiyo-e (浮世絵), wood block prints. From Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji to Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, a clear, commanding blue dominates the prints of the period. This blue was not sukumo but came from a synthetic pigment — Prussian blue — discovered by accident in Berlin around 1706, and carried to Japan through Dutch trade at Nagasaki in the late 18th century. The Japanese called it bero-ai (ベロ藍), from "Berlin blue."
Before bero-ai, ukiyo-e printers had worked with plant-based blues made from indigo plants or tsuyukusa (dayflower). These pigments were fugitive: they faded quickly, bled in printing, and could not hold a sharp line. It was bero-ai that made Hokusai's Great Wave and Hiroshige's Sudden Shower possible, and that touched off the great boom of landscape prints in the 1830s. Pigment analyses by conservators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have shown that Hokusai's printers used both plant-based blues and bero-ai together, layering them to give the waves their depth, movement, and unforgettable force. Even before the ukiyo-e boom, recent research has revealed that Ito Jakuchu (1716–1800), one of the prominent painters of the Edo period, also used bero-ai in his famous scroll series Colorful Realm of Living Beings.
Bero-ai itself was eventually displaced by newer synthetic pigments, and sukumo indigo very nearly vanished. And yet the ukiyo-e prints pulled in the Edo period — especially those that have been carefully preserved — still hold a blue so luminous it almost seems to hum, and the haori and kimono dyed with sukumo two centuries ago continue to carry that same clear Japan Blue into our own time. Two different "Japan Blues," born of utterly different materials and histories, live on side by side as the single, unmistakable color of an age.
Images:
Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重), Kanda Konya-chō (名所江戸百景 神田紺屋町 / Meisho Edo Hyakkei: Kanda Konya-chō), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1857 (Ansei 4). Woodblock print (ōban nishiki-e); ink and color on paper, 37.4 × 25.3 cm. Collection of Tokyo Fuji Art Museum.
Kimono-Shaped Coverlet (Yogi) with Lobster and Crest (紺木綿地海老模様夜着 / Kon Momen-ji Ebi Moyō Yogi), artist unknown, Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912), mid-19th century. Plain-weave cotton, resist-dyed and painted with dyes and pigments (tsutsugaki), 67 × 58 1/4 in. (170.2 × 148 cm). Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seymour Fund.
Fireman's Coat (Hikeshi Banten) with a Sword-Wielding Figure (火消半纏 紺木綿刺子地人物模様 / Hikeshi Banten, Kon Momen Sashiko-ji Jinbutsu Moyō), artist unknown, Japan, Edo period. Indigo-dyed cotton with sashiko stitching and figural design. Source: ColBase, Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage (https://colbase.nich.go.jp/).
Noragi, farmer’s Jacket, c. 1900. Photo by Kyoichi Tsuzuki
Indigo farmer-dyer Kievan Havens at work in the sukumo fermentation room of the Toyamas, one of the last families still practicing indigo cultivation and sukumo making.
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎), Under the Wave off Kanagawa (富嶽三十六景 神奈川沖浪裏 / Fugaku Sanjūrokkei: Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830–32. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 × 15 in. (25.4 × 38.1 cm). Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎), Sazai Hall at the Temple of the Five Hundred Arhats (冨嶽三十六景 五百らかん寺さざゐどう / Fugaku Sanjūrokkei: Gohyaku Rakanji Sazaidō), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830–32. Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 1/16 × 14 5/8 in. (25.6 × 37.1 cm). Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ito Jakuchu (伊藤若冲, 1716–1800), Group of Fishes (動植綵絵 群魚図 / Dōshoku Sai-e: Gungyo-zu), from the series Colorful Realm of Living Beings (動植綵絵 / Dōshoku Sai-e), c. 1766. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, 142.6 × 79.4 cm. The Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shōzōkan, Tokyo (National Treasure).