First Series | Ten Questions About Cloth
Part 7 | What Do We Call Sashiko?
“When did sashiko begin?” I am often asked this when I teach sashiko. But the more I research it, the less simple the question becomes. Even if we found the first written use of the word sashiko, would that really tell us when the practice itself began?
I sometimes think of cooking. People were boiling, roasting, and preparing food long before all of those actions were gathered under the words we use today. The action can come before the name. I wonder if sashiko may be similar. This is only an analogy, but it helps me separate the action from the name. People may have been layering, joining, reinforcing, and stitching cloth before we know when some of those practices began to be called sashiko.
The Action and the Name Are Not the Same Question
One important example survives in the Shōsōin. The eighth-century Buddhist robe 九条刺納樹皮色袈裟 (Kujō Shinō Juhishoku no Kesa) was made by joining irregular pieces of silk with repeated stitching. The Nara National Museum has used the modern expression 「刺し子縫い」—“sashiko-style sewing”—to help explain the technique.
But this does not mean that people in the eighth century called it sashiko. What we can safely say is that an eighth-century textile preserved in the Shōsōin shows cloth being joined with repeated stitching. Similar actions—joining, layering, reinforcing, and repairing cloth—appear again in other times and places.
So for me, there are two different questions: When did people begin doing these things to cloth? And when did some of those practices begin to be called “sashiko”?
What I Think About Sashiko Now
From here, this is canoha’s current view. People have long layered, stitched, reinforced, joined, repaired, and reused cloth. The names, materials, purposes, and techniques differed from place to place and from period to period. I do not think every old stitched textile should be called sashiko, nor do I think all of these practices form one continuous historical line.
But some of them may later have come to be connected with the name sashiko. Perhaps sashiko did not begin as one single technique at one single moment. The stitching may have existed first. The name may have come later.
And that leads to the next question. If the purpose was only to join cloth, repair it, or make it stronger, why did the stitches become patterns?
Next: Part 8 | If Mending Was the Only Purpose, Why Did Sashiko Need Patterns?