niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

A light and soft fabric that brings you a comfortable feeling. A deep, vivid shade expressed in a combination of bold but delicately coloured threads. A cherished work of art, worldly, and free from limitation of age, or gender. Love that dwells upon a singular oeuvre whilst displaying varying expressions, one at a time. A shawl is a more than a work of art; it is an expression of philosophy and feeling. The ‘only one shawl’ is a piece of work to come into the world in various ways, conveying the manufacturing philosophy, the ‘crystal’ of the work, as the shawl, which is woven slowly through a belt type power loom made in 1965, specifically. This was created in 2010 when Tamaki moved from Osaka to Nishiwaki, the home of Banshu-ori, through trial and error, finding her own path using her own machine as the means of creation.

Sakai

The path we took was not so easy. The birth of the shawl was like a laborious effort.

Tamaki

Even though Sakai brought various business proposals, those were not like what I wanted to do. Since I quit my previous job and began my own brand, I didn’t want to try something like an employee can do. When I worked for a company, I had to do anything I was told to do. It was a pain for me. Even if I felt it was not right, I had no choice. If I feel it is not fun, I cannot create anything enjoyable. That’s why I started my own brand. So I couldn’t take the offer if I felt it was not interesting.

Sakai

Even something I was sure it would surely go well with business, Tamaki didn’t take it.

Tamaki

Because I didn’t know why I should have done that for. For money? Then, I should be back to a salaried employee again. If it is just for money.

Sakai

If she had a business mindset like me, we could have been successful sooner in Osaka.

Tamaki

Indeed. From the first year when we launched tamaki niime.I think it could have been so much easier if we started in Osaka to be ordinary apparel. However, it was meaningless. So I kept saying ‘No.’

Sakai

There was no reason why Tamaki cannot be successful with her vast potential. It depended on how it was used. Every time I arranged a new business plan, Tamaki denied it…every single time.

Tamaki

Because they had no meanings.

Sakai

Even I presented a very flat and ‘healthy’ way; she always chooses the ‘thorny’ path’.

Tamaki

I did not say that the ‘thorny path’ is the better way.You see things in a business view subjectively, right?

Sakai

Well, compared to the ordinary apparels, our way is kind of a thorny path. For example, how we make shawls. They are usually one-of-a-kind or small lot and cannot be mass-produced. While that can make it seem difficult, once it is understood, I think things will become clear.

Tamaki

I thought that this is the way creation should be.

– Did you have any specific image?

Tamaki

When I was in the position of an employee or a consumer, I definitely wanted to get rid of everything I didn’t like. I would say I dislike mass-production. I hated to be put on a job. I create and am being creative at the same time. That’s the style I’ve always wanted.

Sakai

To put it plainly, the fashion world doesn’t care. Both Tamki and I had something in common.

Tamaki

When we joined the factory tour, we felt no excitement. We didn’t feel any butterflies in our stomachs at all.

– There is an impression that you tried to rebuild the whole creation system, the tamaki niime’s way, all by yourself.

Tamaki

As I looked around at the fashion industry, they have high technology, and there are many good things for each department. However, I didn’t get excited to see the whole thing. That’s why I wanted to combine this and that to make something incredibly exciting.

Sakai

That’s also my own style of marketing and branding. So I’m looking for the way to express with Tamaki’s essence as the axis? Tamaki, who purposely choose the difficult road, stoically moving forward with her methodology. How can I present her as the one and only to the world? And yet, her message is included at the roots of the work is so deeply embedded in philosophy. However, we didn’t want it to come on too loud, so as I am very obsessed with how its popularity is expressed, so as to make it easy for everyone to comprehend. I want to be different from existing apparel, and I should firmly state that while promoting something that is soft on the outside. Like a condensed marshmallow.

Soft and Fluffy with a deep flavour. Also an odd sensation.

Sakai

Oh, yeah!

Tamaki

A bit prickly. (laugh)

– Need edges, right?

Sakai

It looks like an ordinary marshmallow, but there are countless points when looking at it through an electron microscope.

Tamaki

It’s rather like deforming liquid than a solid marshmallow.

Sakai

It’s like an ameba.

Tamaki

Yeah, it depends on the day, like an ameba…although there is a basic form but then suddenly its somewhat different today.I feel that sense of enjoyment and creativity flowing from you, and the opportunity for something more..

Sakai

“We are very intuitive, but when we look back, we were logical or consistent as a result.”

Tamaki

“So, an idea popped into my head, and I had to do it…yesterday, I didn’t even think about it…suddenly, it flashes what I was not even going to do today, but I want to do it now. So, I tried to think about how to do it as quick as possible.

Sakai

“The more experience we have, the easier it gets.”

Tamaki

“It’s in Sakai’s personality to react like this, and I improve it, and shape the idea from its raw form, from one. It is Sakai who generates the idea from zero to one, but it is not as exciting as doing something unique(laughs), but I would like to do something more unique.

Sakai

“That’s how we create the shawls.”

Tamaki

There is a barometer for common sense, but maybe both of us hate it. That’s why we match each other. We are interested in something far away from common sense. Shawls, for example…I kept trying to have a better one with the power loom, and when I completed it, I showed our works to various people, but no one said that it was nice.

Sakai

No one.

Tamaki

But only Sakai said it was awesome! He said it was exciting and he had never seen anything like this when I made ‘only one shawl’ for the first time. In the meantime, I tried to make a thing that no one has created. I tried and tried, made so many different patterns. Then finally, I made something I really like. I thought it was pretty good. I showed it to him immediately, and he really liked it, right?

Sakai

“…that was remarkable.”

Tamaki

I had never seen such a thing! We got so excited that we expected to take the shawls to many places to show them. However, we didn’t get any evaluation at all. (No one was impressed.) Their face turned blank. They didn’t know if it was good…or not…

Sakai

They didn’t get it at all.

Tamaki

Like ‘What’s this?’

Sakai

We got blank stares. That’s how they looked. Both the people in the top apparel industry in Tokyo and those who are in western Japan were. None of them could understand.

Tamaki

“It’s like they didn’t know what to say. Just like seeing the artwork of an artist. They didn’t know what to say, or they didn’t understand at all?”

– Was that something they had never seen before?

Tamaki

Yeah, I knew that they couldn’t say anything, good or bad because they had never seen it before. I realised I made something entirely new…so I thought I should keep going. Actually, we were surprised to see the differences in tension fuse. The people who are related Banshu-ori didn’t give us a good reaction like ‘this kind of thing is level B., but for us, the shawls were perfectly soft and a brand new creation!

– Did you get good reactions from the customers, after you created the unique shawls and decided to move forward?

Tamaki

When the shoppers say ‘Wow, this is good!’, when the shops we brought in our creations to showed good reactions, or when they became famous through the net.

– Like stocked energy had burst into the air?

Tamaki

At that time, I only had two belt-type weaving looms. We desperately worked. When the yarn broke, we had to stop the loom and tie the thread. Soon after we started the shawls, we had more( and more) orders. Since we realised that we could make not make enough, we ordered a new rapier loom…

Tamaki’s creation process pursued this ideal with full awareness of the complicated steps that impede them from completion of the shawls and their works, whilst secretly keeping her feelings hidden, quickly gained broad support. They became so popular overnight and now, they cross borders and are growing out into the world. In closing, they talked about how to combine various colour threads that they put into their shawls and Tamaki Niime’s creations. From their words, I felt the endless excitement of the creation.

Tamaki

I enjoy lining up the strings before weaving them. It’s kind of my hobby. I play with the threads, like ‘Does this colour and that one match well?’, ‘Do they make interesting colour combination?’ or ‘Does this work?’…etc. Actually, both Sakai and I enjoy this process, don’t we? (Talks to Sakai.) We enjoy this process to create a new colour combination. Unsure of colours and challenging ones are entirely different when they are finished. It will be shown directly from the creation. So we always tell our staff to line up the colours to challenge them and create dynamic colour combinations.

Sakai

Actually this has to be like a ‘live process‘ rather than something that has already decided or just has to be worked on. I mean, an energetic atmosphere like a ‘living painting’, you pick the coloured threads just like the artist chooses the paints, a loom is like a canvas … when we see the creation, we may try like this or like that…

Tamaki

It’s really fun! There are so many opportunities for creation there! I get excited. So that’s the way tamaki niime’s creation should be, and it is also reflected in the creations themselves.

Tamaki

If you mass produce it, it will not be there, you won’t be stronger in the sense of a mission that you must never fail so that eighty percent of people have to be told that is was good that I had to do it.

– On the most significant common denominator ideas…

Tamaki

Indeed. Because this is the royal road of Japan’s manufacturing, even the automobile, the further we go, the more creative entities like us are going to disappear, so somehow there is a rare one, a rare one, and a rare one…well, something exciting and pleasant. I want to aim for something like that…

– Yet it will still sell.

Tamaki

As long as we continue, our hurdles will keep going up, so we have to create more new colours and works one after the other. At the same time, we would like to train our staff that can enjoy it as well as ourselves.

Original Japanese text by Seiji Koshikawa.
English translation by Adam & Michiko Whipple.