Evening Fireflies

 
On a summer evening, fireflies begin to appear among the grasses by the water—one small light, then another.
 
Glowing softly in the darkness, they reveal themselves only for a moment before fading once more into the night.
 
This fleeting, dreamlike scene is woven into the kimono through layers of blue, green, pale yellow and muted violet.
All the colours were created using natural dyes.
 
The warp threads are patterned using a traditional warp-ikat technique.
Because the threads are resist-dyed before weaving, subtle shifts and blurred edges emerge where the colours meet.
 
These gentle variations evoke the flickering movement of fireflies—their lights trembling, drifting and disappearing into the darkness.
 
Rather than depicting the fireflies themselves, this work seeks to capture the atmosphere surrounding them: the stillness of the waterside, the scent of summer grasses, the moisture in the evening air, and the memory of lights appearing and vanishing in the night.
 
This work was created in the hope that a fleeting encounter with nature might quietly come to life again within the woven cloth.

Indigo-dyeing the kasuri warp threads

Weaving