Receiving from nature, working with our hands, and passing it on.
At yamamayu, our cloth begins with the cocoon.
We raise silkworms, make mawata silk floss, spin thread, dye, and weave.
Along the way, there are plants and water, the land, human hands, and tools that have been used for many years.
Cloth does not come from a single material alone.
It gradually takes shape through relationships with many different things.
What we want to value is not simply taking from nature, but making use of what we receive as fully as we can. Repairing tools and continuing to use them. Listening to the knowledge that has been passed down through the land. And caring for the finished cloth so that it can be used for a long time.
For us, a cycle does not mean drawing a perfect circle.
It means not allowing our relationship with what we have received to end there.
1｜Receiving from nature, and returning to nature
Silkworms feed on mulberry leaves, cocoons are formed, and from those cocoons comes thread.
We also receive color from plants.
Materials from the making process that can return to nature, such as plant matter left after dyeing and silkworm pupae, are composted and returned to the soil.
We do not believe that using natural materials is automatically environmentally responsible.
What do we use, where does it come from, how much do we take, and how do we use it?
We try to keep asking these questions, and to take only what we need.
Rather than seeing nature simply as a source of materials, we want to relate to it as one of the many presences that supports our cloth-making.
2｜Using materials as fully as possible
Weaving inevitably leaves behind short lengths of thread, leftover yarn, and small pieces of cloth.
At yamamayu, rather than discarding them whenever possible, we tie them, connect them, and find ways to bring them into another piece of cloth or another form of expression.
Even an uneven material, or a short piece that remains, carries the time it has taken to arrive at that point.
Instead of trying to make everything uniform,
if a material still has something it can become, we pick it up once more.
To use a material fully is to continue our relationship with it to the end.
That is how we think about it.
3｜Repairing tools and continuing to use them
Our studio holds looms, warping machines, and tools for making thread that have been used for many years.
Sometimes replacing an old machine with a new one would be more efficient.
Even so, there are tools we continue to use, maintaining them and repairing them when something breaks.
Old tools carry traces of the hands that have used them, as well as ways of working that have developed over a long period of time.
Rather than simply preserving these tools, we continue to work with them. In doing so, not only the tools themselves, but also techniques and ways of sensing through the hands can be passed on.
We also explore new ways of using them.
But we try not to destroy what is essential in what has been handed down.
From that foundation, we consider what can be done in the present.
4｜Learning from the land and carrying handwork forward
It has been about twenty-five years since we established our studio in the mountains of Yamanashi.
Here, we have seen everyday practices closely connected with nature and daily life: cutting wood and making charcoal, hunting wild boar and preparing it for food, and drying and shelling soybeans by hand.
As the local population grows older, however, these scenes are gradually becoming less common.
When people no longer enter and care for the mountains, the relationship between human life and the natural environment also begins to change.
In the past, fallen leaves were gathered from the mountains in winter and used as compost for fields. Where the leaves had been cleared, fresh shoots would emerge in spring, providing food for wild animals. Human care for the mountains was itself part of a larger cycle.
For people and wild animals to continue living alongside one another, we believe it may be important not simply to protect the mountains from a distance, but to remain appropriately involved with them.
One thing yamamayu can do is to restore areas where mulberry and oak trees were once grown for sericulture and Tensan wild silkworm raising, and to nurture these practices again as an important part of life that has been passed down in this region.
Raising cocoons, making thread in the studio, dyeing, and weaving.
As much as possible, we hope to reconnect the process from material to cloth within this land.
For dyeing, we would also like to grow indigo and, where the local environment allows, explore ways of protecting and cultivating plants that were once valued as dye sources but are now becoming rare. We are also looking at how familiar plants, such as kudzu encountered while tending the mountains and fields, might be used.
There is a limit to what we know on our own.
That is why we want to learn from people who have lived on this land for many years, and carry their knowledge forward—not by returning everything to the way it was in the past, but by finding ways for it to live within work and daily life today.
To inherit the knowledge of a place is not to return to the past, but to build our relationship with the land again.
That is how we see it.
5｜Caring for things so they can be used for longer
Cloth changes with the time it is used.
It may soften, become more familiar to the body, and gradually take on a different expression from when it was new.
When we receive requests about fraying or other damage to a yamamayu piece, we examine its condition and, where possible, repair it.
In some of our dyeing workshops, participants also bring garments that have become stained or that they would like to wear again, and give them new color through plant dyeing.
Replacing something with something new is not the only choice.
Sometimes we can put our hands to what already exists, once more.
By doing so, our time with that object may continue a little longer.
Rather than thinking of cloth as finished when it leaves the studio, we hope to make pieces that continue to grow through the time they spend with the person who uses them.
To inherit does not mean to keep everything unchanged
The textile work that has continued since 1894 has never remained exactly the same.
Ways of living have changed, tools have changed, and what we make has changed as well.
What has continued is the act of touching materials, working with our hands, and trying to sense what can be learned from them.
Some things should be protected.
Some things can change.
And some things ask us to stop for a moment and consider carefully.
We look for that boundary, while bringing what we have inherited into the present.
And what grows from it can then be passed on again.
Nature and people, materials and tools, past and present.
They meet and intertwine, continuing into the time that comes next.
This is what CYCLES & CARE means to yamamayu.