kimono

[aimeekitty]

Twilight for the Kimono:
A Venerable Japanese Weaver Toils and Watches As a Kyoto District's Humming Looms Fall Silent a facinating article about how the craft of making fine kimonos is dying out (since no one is learning the trade... and people are not buying them as often) even if you aren't interested in kimonos, it's poignant.
well, I'd buy his work if I could afford it. :( Just a "made to order" polyester "casual" kimono can be easily $400. This isn't the only art form in Japan that's dying out though. Many of the National Treasure artists are getting old, and no one is learning the craft from them. It breaks my heart. These art forms will simply dissappear with the last of their masters.
I worry about this also with animation, even though animation is starting to turn around a little. Without companies making the artform... and the masters passing it on, the most precious techniques will be forgotten.
... I only have so much time, and there's so much I want to learn about so many things.

Comments

[ashbet]

That is just heartbreaking :(

I wish that there was a way that the government could subsidize students interested in becoming apprentices to these National Treasure masters . . . offer some type of guarantee so that talented artists would be drawn to the field.

It's a terrible shame seeing these skills being lost as their last practitioners die :(

-- A <3

[aimeekitty.livejournal.com]

the "national treasures" are subsidized (ie the artists who are seen as masters) however,... not their students... they really should have some type of grants, etc.. for that also.

[thundermew.livejournal.com]

That's so sad, that article.

Even though I can't draw for crap, I know what you're saying about traditional animation.. it's how I feel about traditional (Disney) Imagineering. No one has grandiose, old school Walt Disney dreams anymore. Everything is just the same off the shelf crap :\

[lysariala.livejournal.com]

i agree. this also goes for many of the traditional domestic arts, like lacemaking and other handwork.

seems the older generations arent passing it on because no one wants to learn. and that is a really sad thing that has become of us today. we are all so trained to the familiar and if we can't find it quickly online or learn it easily from a book or a class, we don't try.

i think the american, and for a large part, the world culture with technology has become incredibly lazy and takes so much for granted.

not that technology is bad, but we rely on things too much without actually retaining skills or knowlege that we don't use every day.

its liek if it doesnt earn you a fat check peopel don't want to know about it :(