“The delicate petals and buds were blooming in the garden as if singing,” writes bingata artist Tomoko Nawa in a poem entitled “Blooming Like a Song.” “I kept it in my heart, wanting to turn it into a design. I dye it again and again, so that it blooms inside the fabric.” The poem is one of many Nawa has composed over the years as lyrical companions to her bingata creations. Joyful and contemplative, they speak mostly of encounters with nature—rapturous, ephemeral moments in communion with the ocean, sky, and bounty of the seasons.
In one poem, a bashō tree beckons with its giant flowers and lush fruits. In another, Nawa ponders a seashell’s origin. In “Round Flower,” she describes twirling a blossom around in her hands “like a kaleidoscope. The seven different flowers dance and sing. I fell in love, as if being sucked in.”
Nawa was struck by a similar sense of awe upon discovering bingata in 2003. She was living in Japan’s Hyōgo Prefecture at the time, working at a café after graduating from drama and nursing school. Okinawa had been a source of fascination since her late teens, and while flipping through a magazine article on traditional Okinawan crafts, she was stunned to discover bingata’s world of vivid technicolor: maple leaves and plum blossoms bursting in shades of crimson and peony, jade-green forests of bamboo and pine vibrating against fields of cinnabar red and canary yellow. “It was love at first sight,” Nawa recalls.
Historically produced for the ruling class and their imperial counterparts in China, bingata served for centuries as a vibrant symbol of the Ryūkyū Kingdom’s diplomatic prestige and cultural influences from China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Designs were dictated by the royal court, with larger patterns and brighter colors signifying higher rank. “Traditional bingata patterns are characterized by the shading that outlines the contours,” Nawa says. “People think it was because of Okinawa’s bright sunshine and strong shadows.”
Nawa relocated to Okinawa to devote herself to the craft, spending the next four years in training before embarking on a career as a full-time bingata artist. She’d been exhibiting her tapestries and framed works around the country for some time when, in 2014, she was invited to Hanoi, Vietnam, to take part in a group exhibition with a dozen other female artists from Japan.
To represent Japanese culture at the exhibition, the wives of the members of the Japanese embassy who assisted with the show planned to wear kimono to the opening, and they encouraged Nawa and her fellow artists to do the same. Many miles from home, her country’s traditional attire was cast in a new light. “It was then that I realized how wonderful kimonos are,” she says.
I dye it again and again, so that it blooms inside the fabric.
Tomoko Nawa, bingata artist
Today, obi (belts) for the Japanese kimono market are a mainstay of Nawa’s bingata practice. At her studio in Nanjo city, lengths of obi fabric are draped from one end of the long, narrow room to the other, suspended one above another along hanging drying racks like the billowing sails of a ship. It’s here she spends most of her day, leaving for only a few hours at a time to drive the short distance home to prepare meals for her 8-year-old daughter. Fortunately, it’s time she relishes. “Losing track of time while dyeing,” she says, “I feel incredibly happy to do something I truly love.”
Though it was bingata’s lively colors that initially drew her in, Nawa tends to pull from a muted palette, an aesthetic that resonates with her mainland Japanese clientele. “My bingata has a Tottori-San’in filter,” Nawa muses, alluding to Japan’s coastal San’in region and the sparsely populated Tottori Prefecture of her upbringing, with its vast sand dunes, mist-cloaked mountains, and serene seascapes. “The colors are a little softer. Gradually I came to realize that I have my own innate sense of color and saturation that comes through in my work. I’ve come to accept that my style is part of my unique expression.”
Her designs, too, reflect the cultural milieu of her native Japan. Along with classic Okinawan bingata patterns, Nawa favors motifs depicting Japanese takarazukushi, or collections of treasures. “My teacher taught me that [the concepts of] denshō and dentō are different things,” Nawa says. “Denshō is about preserving the old as much as possible, just as it is. Dentō is about tradition that changes with the times, incorporating new things. I was taught that both are important. When I thought about which one resonates with me, I realized I’m more aligned with dentō than denshō.”
This approach is one that fueled the revival of many traditional crafts after the fall of the Ryūkyū Kingdom and the periods of political and social turmoil that followed. Eiki Shiroma, a member of a prominent bingata family, is revered as a pioneer of bingata for his efforts to ensure the survival of the craft after World War II, when there was little demand and equally little means for bingata making. Scavenging through the trash at the U.S. military base for materials to use as tools, Shiroma boldly adapted bingata patterns to appeal to new markets, expanding upon the classic bingata patterns his family conceived for the ruling dynasties.
It is from this spirit of reinvention that Nawa’s creations blossom, drawing upon the palette of her homeland and the traditions of her home. A custom bingata design she created for Halekulani Okinawa in 2019 conjures the wonders of this exuberant landscape of influences: “Through the palm-lined streets…” she writes in its accompanying poem, “the yūna flower, the flower of Onna village, and the orchid, the symbol of Halekulani Okinawa, beautifully adorn the scene ahead. The endlessly blue sea, the vibrant fish swimming within it, and the radiant coral reefs … I send my wishes to protect and cherish them all.”
