niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

‘tamaki niime Shinbun’ is a free newspaper that is one of the tools to introduce ‘tamaki niime’. Seven years ago, when they moved to the current location, they started issuing it to write about the thoughts of Tamaki and Sakai, and they are still issuing it while changing some parts.

Ms Ae worked by taking photos of the primary visual front cover. There’s an impressive picture of Tamaki and Sakai’s back view standing at the old dyeing factory before the renovation, the ‘tamaki niime mura’ building. Has she ever studied photography?


“No, I have never studied. I just took the pictures I wanted, and I can’t even use high-spec cameras. I went to Slovenia in Eastern Europe for six months around the time the COVID-19 Pandemic started.”


Suddenly, she started talking, and showed me many pictures of landscapes on her phone. I was attracted to the picture of the small town surrounded by rich nature with a running river, which was photographed in an outstanding composition as if watching a beautiful painting.


“I just took this with a regular iPhone, not with a professional triple lens camera. I really don’t know the theory at all, such as this angle with this size. Oh! That’s beautiful. Click! That’s all I did repeatedly. I don’t understand the logic of photography.”


The pictures that look fully calculated are the landscapes in each moment that Ms Ae’s vivid feeling was captured, and she took them with a camera on her device.


“Slovenia is a good place. These two swans in this picture are cute, right? Two swans were swimming together by chance, so I told them, “Thank you!” and took a picture.”


—— Why did you stay in Slovenia?


“I visited Slovenia on a trip in 2019. When I went to bled lake, I fell in love with it at first sight. I thought I wanted to live here.”


Once she decided on it, she was quick to act, so she went to a language school in Slovenia for three months.


“I challenged myself to live there for six months. That was in the beginning of 2020. I think it was in February when the Pandemic suddenly started. I got a phone call from the Japanese Embassy telling me that international flights would stop flying in a few days, and they didn’t know how long they would last. They asked me if I wanted to go home or stay.”


—— I see…


“I didn’t want to go home in this situation. So I told them that I would stay. (laugh) I experienced a lockdown there.”


She took this crisis as a rare opportunity and stayed in Slovenia, near Italy’s east side. It used to belong to Yugoslavia and now is an independent small country with a population of 2,000,000. I wonder what damage was caused by the Pandemic there?


“Even though it was a strange atmosphere that all the stores were closed, and there was no one on the streets, it was basically calm and peaceful. The people were a little closed in the small country about the size of Shikoku Island in Japan. As I had learned the Slovenian language for a few months and could communicate a little with people in the stores, people were very happy to talk with me, that was very similar to Japanese people. As I talked to people openly, many were kind and warm.”


—— Using the Slovenian language you learned, you may connect with your business in the future.


“I want to connect with Nishiwaki. (laugh)”


Ms Ae wanted to go abroad from her 20s because she felt confined in Japanese society. After coming home from Slovenia, she had no choice but to stay in Japan because of the pandemic. In such situations, she started feeling blessed with meeting good people in Japan.


“Oh, I noticed that the place was not the problem . After all, there are many neat people in Japan, whom I can be myself and talk to freely. Knowing that, my desire to go abroad has been dismissed . My feeling of disliking Japan disappeared.”


Her motivation for this job was starting at ‘tamaki niime’ and meeting various people abroad, but her desire now shows the opposite vector.


“My desire was that I can go abroad from Nishiwaki and introduce products to the world. Now I do hope people from other countries will come here.”


She had a feeling that something was different in Japanese society since she was young. After graduating from college, she ran into a big wall when she worked as a kindergarten teacher for four years.


“I wanted children to be independent and grow up freely in childhood education. I don’t like to force them to do things military-style. Instead I tried to educate them to have more time to talk with their opinions in having their meetings to decide what they want to do today. However, the last word I was told by the principal was that I had to grow up. I know I am selfish somehow, but if I have to follow such ways, I don’t want to be a grownup.”


—— The principal meant that you had to compromise and follow what you had to do manually.


“I felt that I deviated from common sense at that time or I couldn’t get along with groups. That’s why I am a sole proprietor, but I love people. In college, I was a captain of the cheerleading club. I love to be in such teams where I can share the same values and ways of thinking. I feel so lively.”


—— You may have strong self-awareness that you belong to a minority.


“Yes, I may have. I want to get along with everyone, but I can’t.”


On her name card, it reads:
Educator: children’s playbooks and English picture books
Travel Coordinator/interpreter
Thai traditional masseuse


After quitting kindergarten and coming home from Canada in the working holiday program, I wanted to do everything I was interested in. I was previously interested in the body system, and a friend of mine whom I met in Canada lived in Chiang Mai, Thailand. She told me that I could learn the technique of massage from her.I didn’t know if I liked it, but I would understand after I did it, so I decided to do it anyway. Wow, I enjoyed it so much. After returning to Japan, I opened traditional massaging at home in 2011.


You can start doing it as soon as you are interested in something. Again, I got your impression that you fit in ‘tamaki niime’. (laugh)


Initially, I was in charge of wholesale in English; Ms Tamaki and Mr Sakai were my customers in massage.


(laugh)


When she started working for wholesale overseas, she was in charge of photographs and was a tour guide for customers who began touring the laboratory at about the same time.


“I was asked for tours because I was good at speaking, and I also responded to interviews from newspapers, magazines, and city and prefecture administrators. Her work increased more and more.


Along with growing the brand, the company continued developing in 2018; one day, suddenly, Ms Ae suffered from sudden hearing loss.


I couldn’t hear the bass anymore and had tinnitus all the time. Fortunately, I recovered in a month and could hear the bass well. But with sudden hearing loss, I was worried about how people looked at me and had difficulty meeting people. It was when they decided to have pop-up stores, and it happened a few months before I went to Thailand.”


It was a time when the business developed dramatically. She played two or three roles at work. She remembers that it was hard, but more than that, she enjoyed having more work, one after another, and talking to many customers. However, she had to quit her job due to a sudden illness.


“I felt so sorry for the people whom I worked with……that I suffered from such thoughts. I couldn’t do the things I should’ve done.”


Ms Ae took a few years to recover completely, but she gained much more awareness during those years.


“Tasting the bottom of life, you realize that things you take for granted are not at all obvious. Knowing I was living in my small world. I expanded my horizons and my values have changed. What is right or wrong? 10 people would have 10 different answers in the world. I took a load off my shoulders when I was aware that I can be in the middle position in knowing and accepting them all.”


For three years after she left ‘tamaki niime’, she received phone calls from Ms Tamaki every year.


“I appreciated her so much because I quit there for my own reasons. On the phone she told me that there’s an interesting person she wants me to see.”


After waiting for my time for five years, a new chance to change my life suddenly came.


“After graduating from college, I lived with my grandfather on my mother’s side at his house. He is a very independent person to cook by himself because he wants to eat what he likes, and also does the laundry by himself . We two lived in a house like a sharing house, which I was really comfortable with. But he passed away this March. 3 months before he died, our family took him to Nikko Toshogu (Toshogu Shinto shrine) where he wanted to go. A month before he died, his body was slowly getting weaker and weaker like a plant is withering away, and we took care of him at home until he passed away with the diagnosis of old age. We were glad we could stay with him all the time. Hatsuko, Mr Sakai’s mom, passed away at the end of last year, and my grandfather passed away 3 months before her death. Their death brought me a big chance to come back to ‘tamaki niime’. Even though I had been asked to be back for a long time, I couldn’t come back. There’s a reason why I wanted to work with them again.”


—— I see.


“Because, as I thought, living is wonderful, but I have been taken for granted for it. I felt for it. A few hours before he passed away, he looked at us firmly, and the words came out of my mouth, suddenly saying, “Grandpa, let’s go to many places to have fun. Let’s go to many countries.” He nodded.


Because I promised him I would have to stand on my feet as a sole proprietor, I decided to do so a few days later. After I had decided, Ms Tamaki called me to ask me to be a coordinator overseas. I answered at once: “Yes, I will do it!”


The people who welcomed her more than anybody else were her old coworkers, who used to share their happiness and hard times with her.


“First, Ms Tamaki and Mr Sakai, and all the staff who used to work together, shouted, “Oh! Ms Ae!” They haven’t changed at all, being the same as five years ago. Of course, they have experienced and grown, but I was happy that their core hadn’t changed. So I was calm and comfortable, feeling like the years 2018 and 2023 got stuck together.”


She undoubtedly understands that ‘tamaki niime’ is changing to develop daily.


“As I look around ‘tamaki niime mura’, they have new machines, and animals came in, and staff are changed. I have been learning to watch little by little to understand the five years of ‘tamaki niime’ ’s growth. But in my mind they haven’t changed since the year 2018.”


The part of the roots of ‘tamaki niime’ that continues to grow big has stayed the same, being the same as before and now. Ms Ae’s heart began to resonate with it again.


“The stem of the company is getting thicker and the branches and leaves are spreading. The core of the stem is not shaking.”


—— Because your core value and ‘tamaki niime’ haven’t changed, I think you could fit in even though you had a blank period. You continue to be yourself and continue to seek.


“Everything is linked. I am glad that I have been living honestly. But if it’s possible, I wish everyone could make a circle to hold hands. Even though we all have different ideas, we are great people all together. I want to seek ‘a circle of peace’ while I am living.”


—— Lastly, would you tell me about your future?


“I want to take good care of connecting chances. I found one in Kamakura. I had a fateful encounter with an incredible creator who gives lives in the space. At Kamakura, ‘under the starry night and moon’, we work with them and start creating clothes, food, and housing. Connecting Nishiwaki and a new store ‘tamaki niime Kamakura’, I imagine experiencing creativity with people worldwide. I am so excited!”

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