niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

By the main house, which has the lab and showroom of the tamaki niime village, sheep, goats, chickens, alpacas, horses, and many other animals are grazing. They find comfortable places on-site, and new lives are born in the niime village.

They looked for new potentials in Banshu-Ori and developed shawls, which brought revolution to the traditional industry. And later on, the products of each Only-One item expanded variations that help to connect with our lives comfortably; even ‘tamaki niime’ keeps exploring manufacturing from a global perspective to seek the original meaning of living.

They may be avant-garde in that they have a sophisticated exhibition showroom and a place for daily creation, and an experimental laboratory, and next to them, there exist communities and living animals that are different from humans. Such conditions of ‘tamaki niime village’, which are not ordinary, may ask us in modern society that we may be losing the richness of the five senses because of separation from nature. (That’s how I feel.)

In this episode of ‘Encyclopedia of niime’, I started thinking of Tamaki and Sakai to speak freely about the topic of ‘why animals and humans need to live together’. As usual, their discussion started with distractions here and there, but it got into deep thoughts about the core of ‘tamaki niime’.

Tamaki: This year is the 20th anniversary.

— It’s been 20 years since the establishment of the tamaki niime brand.

Tamaki: I have been thinking a lot so far, but I have more things to consider this year. There have been many changes, and I have become more aware of myself.

— I see.

Tamaki: We have an opportunity to talk to Mr Hakusui* once a month.

*Mr Takahiro Shiramizu was the previous representative of the district cultural trading company ‘Unagi no Nedoko (A sleeping place for eels)’ which is stationed at Yame City in Fukuoka Prefecture, now a founder’s advisor of the company and a representative of Shiramizu Co., Ltd.

— You talked with him in the tabe room the other day.

Tamaki: Yeah, when Sakai and I talk to staff, it’s like information is being transmitted down from the top. So we can’t have discussions. You know, we could discuss on-site issues. Can you understand that?

— You mean it’s about a more core part of the problems, right?

Tamaki: I want to discuss huge problems like ‘how ‘tamaki niime’ keeps living for the future!? But as soon as I start talking like that, everyone becomes quiet…it looks like, ’Okay, I see, please hang in there’. It’s not fun at all.

— Why do you think that they become like that?

Sakai: When Tamaki and I talk about our big visions, we make sense of each other, but when Tamaki starts talking to staff …

— No one replies.

Sakai: That’s right. She is the only one who speaks partially. She can’t fix the sentences she wants to tell them.

Tamaki: I can’t connect the words in my imagination.

Sakai: She is the person who just tosses her visions partially to them. I could catch what she meant and reply to her.

— Hmmm…

Sakai: However, you can discuss it with Mr Shiramizu, right?

Tamaki: Yeah, he is very good at it. He is like a mix of Sakai and me.

— He has a richness of sensibility and logical thoughts together and could fix them well.

Tamaki: That’s right. He offers the idea of putting them together with diagramming. It looks like, ‘That’s what I meant, wow! It’s amazing you understood!’, right?

Sakai: Mr Shiramizu was originally an architect, that’s why he is good at constructing.

Tamaki: I think it was well evaluated, so my brain has been refreshed. About niime village in the future, we try to verbalize the plan. We are in the process of putting it all together. Three of us had a strategy meeting about how we should have priority orders to do them. Am I correct?

Sakai: Yeah.

Tamaki: Without being verbalized, I believe we make parts connected. What I am doing now and my future plan is connected to one road in my head. Many elements are not in the time series but appear here and there. I instantly pick up parts that I believe seem to work for my target future, but I can’t verbalize the reasons why I pick them up. Why? It’s just because we need them.

— Without reasons.

Tamaki: So, for ‘niime village’, we simply do it for how we fix it and how we should connect with our goal. It looks like this: It may work in this way, but I want to do it more in that way or this one. So, things connect to each other little by little, and they will finally be connected and complete. However, if you ask me to explain the final concept verbally, I can’t even see our future. I just do my assignments in front of me and will go forward in my desired direction.

— Just like doing puzzles.

Tamaki: Yeah.

— It does not assemble a plastic model. I don’t build with prepared designs.

Tamaki: It is completely a puzzle. We have each piece of a puzzle, and it is supposed to connect here and there…but people don’t understand it. What shall we do?

— Mr Shiramizu is…

Tamaki: He is the one to connect it. We have a transaction with ‘Unagi no Nedoko,’ and Mr Hakusui has been a long-time friend. When he started working freelance, I had an opportunity to ask him how he would work from now on and invited him to work with us because it would be interesting.

Sakai: I invited him and made an offer to do it together. Tamaki has a lot of puzzle pieces in her head, and I take a systematic approach and have been thinking about how we put elements of each situation to make our vision come true faster. I asked Mr Shiramizu because I thought he was the best in many things and was as perfect as I thought.

— So, you have a strategy meeting once a month.

Tamaki: He has been with us as a facilitator since July. As it started, he gave us a new idea about our business, which suddenly made many things move forward.

Sakai: Yeah, he is speedy in understanding and doing things because he is also a businessman.

Tamaki: He is trying to verbalize what ‘tamaki niime’ is.

— What is the language of Mr Shiramizu to express ‘tamaki niime’ in discussion with him?

Tamaki: When he heard our talk for the first time, he instantly said, ‘is this what you are trying to say?’ We were shocked at his understanding. That’s it!!

(Tamaki verbally read Mr Shiramizu’s proposal.)

Tamaki: He will do it. He thinks it’s interesting about our animals and wonders why we have them, but he verbalized it:

1. How lives are born… creations and the birth of lives
2. How to burn life…how to live, how it works
3. How to end life… death
Centering on lives, we found that textiles and animals are the same in creating ‘how livesare born’.

— I see. I feel that they are the essence of ‘tamaki niime’.

Tamaki: We said to him, “That’s it! That’s it!”

— It really makes sense, right?

Tamaki: That’s right.

— Being a little away from the point of view of ‘tamaki niime’, you become more transparent about some points.

Tamaki: As we sum it up, we could call it ‘Circulation of Life’.

Adding spinning from growing cotton to sales, 100% pure materials and all processes are accomplished and circulated in their own company domestically. Such unique ‘tamaki niime’s’ new manufacturing is having animals interact in rich natural environments and consider our life as humans and go forward. They call such an approach the ‘Circulation of Life’. I mentioned it as ‘purely made in Japan’, which doesn’t mean any difference; however, Tamaki didn’t want to emphasize the word ‘purely made in Japan’ because it may be dangerous nowadays being just used as a good image of products and consuming them as if it didn’t mean it.

Tamaki: If I were asked about my creations, I would say I create ’Circulations of Life’ with my hands. That’s our manufacturing because we make One and Only One.

— It is the One and Only and the origin of the workings of life.

Sakai: Tamaki’s thoughts wouldn’t stop, and she doesn’t like to be hindered while her thoughts spin at full speed. If we try to make our vision come true, people around her must catch up to her speed. In that sense, Mr Shiramizu responds to her very quickly and can run with her.

If we make Tamaki’s thoughts slow down and even the company goes slowly, it would change and lose the way the brand ‘tamaki niime’ has been changing and repeating transformations for 20 years.

Sakai: Tamaki was disappointed that the staff couldn’t understand what she said. It’s just because Tamaki was not in the same phase as the staff. It does not matter if either one is wrong or not. In the staff’s mind, Tamaki’s thoughts for the future are far from those of the staff. If they adapt to each other, they have to step back. I don’t think it’s good for us. My job should be to keep Tamaki’s thoughts fresh.

— Mr Sakai, you speak more logically than usual.

Tamaki: Including everything, shall I talk about why we keep animals?

— Baby lambs were born. It is really the ‘Circulation of Life’.

Tamaki: I wanted to give birth by myself. In this niime village. I wanted to know the Circulation of Life.

— …

Tamaki: Not in a hospital. Back in time, people gave birth at home, and some died at home.

— I was born in a generation wherey a Midwife picked me up.
I was born in the Showa 30s, which is the early 1960s, the high economic growth period. Our generation has become 60 years old. My young childhood transitioned from a self-sufficient, traditional, or pre-rural life in rural Japan to a gradual invasion by consumer society.

Tamaki: I am curious about how prosperous the old times were.

— It was not abundant economically.

Tamaki: They had abundance in hearts and life.

— Even though they were poor, their lifestyle was laid back, and there wasn’t such a time crunch like in modern times. They made good use of the products of rice fields, fields, mountains and rivers, with adults working and children playing through the four seasons.

Tamaki: They didn’t have microwave ovens, right?

— Of course not. It was around the time that refrigerators and black-and-white TVs were starting to be installed. Mothers washed in the river, and miso paste was homemade, so there were rooms for large buckets.

Sakai: I think that people and animals, and the birth of children, they are all the essence ofcreativity.

— Exactly.

Sakai: In a sense, we make things with purposes, right? But the process of having children is different. Even though we could control it with some effort, we couldn’t predict 100%.That’s the different point from manufacturing. For manufacturing, we can see how they go and predict how they will be made. However, we are not sure about the birth of children or animals. In such a way, the Circulation of Life is what ‘tamaki niime’ has been doing and will be doing in the future.

— The creation of ‘tamaki niime; is unpredictable.

Sakai: That’s right, that’s right. Creation should be in such a way.

Tamaki: We are too tied up with how we are supposed to be?

Sakai: Yeah.

Tamaki: Of course, we need many choices to survive and do business.

Sakai: As long as we humans survive.

Tamaki: Surely, we do as a survival strategy.

Sakai: Yeah.

Tamaki: Just like we make selections in business, we also make choices for living. For example, male animals fight to get females, or females can get pregnant even after giving birth. That looks instinctual, but I think it’s the result of selections.

— Hmm…

Tamaki: Do you understand? While animals live at any moment, they decide if they should challenge themselves or give up. They not only live with instinct, but they also make judgments for all. I think animals think about the best way they should take when seeing situations before them.

Sakai: I don’t think they think, but feel.

Tamaki: They feel with their body and take action. But we humans have large brains, and that’s why…

Sakai: Our five senses are degenerated.

Tamaki: Five senses are degenerated. I mean to think in the gut, not the head. It is not good if you don’t think at all, but while you think that thinking in your head is the best, you won’t feel it. You have to cut off your thinking.

— You shake it off without being caught up in the thought.

Tamaki: Once you have your thoughts in your head, and when you suddenly let go of everything in your mind, you will get something. I think that’s how we think in our stomachs for living. I think our creativity should be done in such a way. It’s hard to tell…

The feeling of art can’t be taught logically with manuscripts. Your creativity would be greatly affected by your judgment, awareness, and repetition of selection.

Tamaki: It is not taught in school, but you become aware of feeling with your body. I hope everyone knows, but you can only get it through experiences. After you think many times in your head, you become free from your thoughts, and the next stage will come to you.

Sakai: In the craftsman world, they learn through experience. Today, we have too much information. The capitalist society has created it, but from now on, and vice versa, we need to sharpen our senses.

We inherit it within our DNA, which must be carved into our body with five senses. In our modern society, information is overflowing and consumed on the internet. Isn’t this the thing that is most neglected?

Sakai: I feel different from human society because I interact with animals. We learn a lot from animals, right? Their world has more senses than we speak with humans.

Tamaki: They don’t need words because they act to act. It is easy because they don’t have to think in their head. Of course, we whisper to them, but it is not a sentence; it is just a word.

Sakai: More specifically, it’s the vibration of sounds.

Tamaki: Yeah, it’s a wave.

Sakai: When you say, “How are you?” or “You are cute,” animals are comfortable waving. So, it is the wave rather than the words.

For example, there are old tales of each district that old people tell their grandchildren, and epic poems about ‘Yukar’ are an oral tradition among the Ainu tribe. The intermediaries of telling stories to take over from generation to generation would be people’s voices with much warmth or rich tones.

Sakai: How Tamaki tells her will with her loud voice is a wave, but the staff couldn’t figure out what she meant while Tamaki and I understood each other through the wave.

Tamaki: Because we are animals.

Sakai: That’s right.

Tamaki: But now it’s enough for us to send our energies to everyone. There’s no matter what we talk about. We can’t remember each one anyway.

Sakai: You don’t have to remember it at all.

Tamaki: It would be all right if we convey that we hope you have a good day.

— That passion is essential.

Tamaki: We show them daily that we are having a good time. I would be glad if we could encourage them to have fun. So, we send them good energy to press the motivation switch.

Sakai: Good waves produce sound waves continually. It inherits continuously. ‘tamaki niime’ heads in that direction.

Words may exist as a tool to help us understand the core facts that we understand through our bodies; they just give you hints or entrances. The important thing is to feel each other each time.

Sakai: If you look far into the future, you may probably overcome the territory of words. I guess what ‘tamaki niime’ aims for is ‘love’. It is not the words ‘I love you’ but how you feel about each other.

Tamaki: Lives are love.

Sakai: That is true.

Tamaki: What I have been thinking recently is: you know, there’s the universe and the earth, and inside the earth are air, water, plants, bugs, animals, and people. We call it the earth that has everything.

― Yes.

Sakai: Everything.

Tamaki: Including all with good and bad things, that is the earth. There are many elements on the earth, and Mr Koshikawa, you are one of them. That means Mr Koshikawa is the earth.

—…???

< continued to part 2 >

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