Visiting the original landscape of bashofu on Iriomote Island
At the end of October, as summer turned to autumn on Iriomote, we visited Koro Kobo together with Mr. Niizato—an OIST researcher and the project lead—to meet Akiko Ishigaki.
Ms. Ishigaki is both a bearer of Yaeyama’s traditional plant-fiber weaving and an active creator who works with those techniques today. Our conversation lasted a full five hours. Early on, she said…
“We received a water buffalo from Yubu Island. We’re helping it get used to our home and way of life.”
Iriomote once relied heavily on water buffalo for farm work and transport. Most of that work is mechanized now. Still, she told us:
“Deep rice paddies are perfect for mud dyeing—and that’s exactly where water buffalo are ideal.”
“In the past, people planted basho (banana) around paddies as windbreaks.”
We came to learn more about how spinning banana fiber—locally pronounced “umu,” the step of making thread—has become the biggest bottleneck in bashofu production (see Part 0). Carefully tracing that process also reveals where bashofu sat in everyday Okinawan life—its culture and history.
Touching the history of Iriomote and bashofu
The conversation turned to Sakiyama, an abandoned village in western Iriomote.
“If you go to the site of Sakiyama’s abandoned settlement, you can still find basho fields there.”
Across the Yaeyama Islands, villages cultivated basho (banana), shikuwasa, millet, and ramie. Bashofu garments were worn for celebrations, while ramie garments were reserved for religious rites. Each cloth carried meaning—special and highly valued.
Because a poll tax existed until the Meiji era, communities without sufficient farmland often paid in textiles—one reason weaving took root across Okinawa.
“My first connection with bashofu was through weaving. When I was young, an elderly woman from Sakiyama—the last person there who could prepare basho fiber—could still do the ‘umu’ process, but her eyesight kept her from weaving, so I helped with the loom.”
(to be continued)
