niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

Placing a weaving machine beside her, a designer weaves to create materials, repeating experiments freely as she feels. The company representative, Tamaki, overturned previously held beliefs, removing the barriers of divisions of labour, and she started eccentric creation in Nishiwaki, the birthplace of Banshu-ori.

After thinking deeply, Tamaki didn’t keep her method, which she had created, to herself but shared it with her staff, who gathered and chose the way to develop and inherit for this district and the nation’s future.

Takanori Chaya and Tamaki have known each other since they were in Fukui. At Tamaki’s request, he joined the company to operate the loom and maintain its maintenance. Being impressed with her enthusiasm, though, at first, he had continual difficulty dealing with unfamiliar super analog machinery.

In the series of niime “Discovering New Things by Taking Lessons from the Past”/’niime Learning from old and new’,’ we listen to unprecedented frontiers in manufacturing open to reveal their ways of overcoming difficulties with trial and error at the developing time of ‘tamaki niime’. This time, we hear from Chaya, who supports ‘tamaki niime’ with his passion for the company within.


——What brought you to ‘tamaki niime’?


“Sakai is my brother-in-law. He and Tamaki talked to me when they just got the looms. They had Mr Ito who was, and still is, in charge of taking care of the machine’s maintenance, but they also needed their own staff for maintenance, so they asked me to be the one.”


The designer Tamaki challenged Chaya to work to make products, and Chaya joined their staff 11 years ago when they had a small shop and lab called ‘589’. Masanao Yamashita, who is in the ‘knitting team’ at present, joined ‘tamaki niime’ as one of the staff at about the same time.


——You have worked in a different field, right?


“Yeah, that’s right. I worked as a scaffold assembler and have never been a maintenance worker, but I replied back quickly, “I will do it.”


——You thought it seemed interesting.


“That’s right. I replied back immediately. I remember I did so on the evening of the same day I was asked. I didn’t take time to think.”


——What was your impression before you got into the company?


“I knew they were an apparel company just by looking from the outside. They were…unique. (laugh)”


——What they were doing.


“I was curious that this kind of business existed. I have known Tamaki and Sakai for a long time, but I didn’t know what they were doing. Yeah, those two were mysterious, and then I heard they would have two belt type power looms. I surely remember going to look at them. I have never seen looms, either. I was amused.”


——At that time, it became a hot topic in the local newspaper that Ms Tamaki, a designer, started weaving independently.


“I have learned a lot about looms after getting into here. I came to talk to other people at loom shops and found out Tamaki and Sakai were doing unusual things. (laugh). That’s when I first realized it made sense. Those two are crazy!”


——You are right…


“In the first place, they are crazy, but grasped essential key points. They are surely making no mistakes. Including their response speed, everything is very fast. Yeah, they are so good. I really knew it, after I once quit here and worked at different place.”


——You had a time when you were away from ‘tamaki niime’, right?


“Once I left here, and realized how different it was. In short, working at a regular company, I really felt their differences on my skin.”


——That is the core part of ‘tamaki niime’, right?


“You can’t realize it while you work here because it has become commonplace. If you go outside and look at how regular companies interact with them, you realize how things go slowly. Oh, no! That’s how they are…not exciting. (laugh)”


Working at ‘tamaki niime’ for almost eight years, he got used to the niime way, which is not bound by common sense, responds speedily, and experiences thrilling developments. After he left, he was not satisfied with the ordinary business way of other companies.


“I was really sure that the movement of the world is so slow.”


——You thought it was not good at all.


“I realized it’s terrible. (laugh) I could end up coming back…I feel more than thankful to be back here.”


He doesn’t speak much, but you can feel his unique, keen sense of honesty and unswerving, single-hearted character from his stammering words.


“I wonder when it was, but I had an argument with Tamaki at the meeting and quit my job that day. I did it on impulse. I bit my boss, and couldn’t take it back. I regretted it the next day. I am just stupid. Hatsuko, my mother-in-law, scolded me a lot.”


——Is that so…


“Three blank years, it was over in a flash when I think back. “


Tamaki had looms and wove to create products, such as shawls, representing her work. After getting a big reputation, she pondered her direction for ‘tamaki niime’. She decided not only to gain her authorship but also to keep Banshu-ori tradition and inheritance of craftsmanship; she gathered various staff to take the helm in developing the business. Chaya was the one she called at that time.


“At that time Tamaki wove on her own, but she had so many other things to do, however, she couldn’t stop weaving, because once you start weaving, you had to keep doing it. I think because she wanted me to do it, and asked me to weave with looms.I liked to use the machines, but the looms were very different, because they were very analogous. At first, that was a problem. I really didn’t know about them.”


Every day, whatever problems he faced, he asked Mr Yoshitada Ito, the owner of a local textile machinery speciality store who still helps teach maintenance at present and is called ‘teacher’, or asked Tamaki directly. He wanted Tamaki to concentrate on other work, so he asked Mr Ito to see the machines daily.
You can still get the parts of rapier looms, but when it comes to belt machinery looms, which can be called vintage, if there are no old parts that need to be replaced, you have to ask a textile machinery shop and steel cast factory to make steel parts on a particular order.


“They are very old. If you change one part with a new part, it stops working because it has a bug. To be interesting, they have to be all worn out.”


——I don’t know if it is called malfunction…I see when only one new part gets in.


“It goes wrong. It is a really difficult point and interesting as well.”


——They look like a living creature.


“It doesn’t mean there’s no problem if you change it to a new part. I am beginning to understand as I take care of machines.”


——Are new parts working well with the machines?


“Yes, they do gradually. I can tell with the working sound. When they have problems, they make funny noises, ‘those guys’. Vice versa, it’s easy to understand it. When it has a problem, the thread breaks in a very nasty way. I need to be aware of it in advance.”


——They go wild? (laugh)


“That’s exactly right.”


——It sounds like they are alive.


“Those belt type machinery looms are super analogous.”


——Two of them are like that?


“Each one has their own characteristics. They are totally different when we use them. One on the left when you get in the laboratory, it’s heavy and hard to handle. You have to get ready before using it. The right one is light. They are upgraded now more than when I was in charge of them.”


Mr Chaya also said, “At the beginning, I couldn’t handle the looms well. At first, I started using 2 rapier machines to get used to handling them.”


“One time I tried to use it while Tamaki was weaving ‘only one shawl’, and it made a big noise, ‘crash’! The warp thread was cut completely and it made it unable to weave. I was scolded hard…because it was a very important time…”


——It’s hard to handle machines.


“If you catch their characteristics, you would know how to handle them. It’s not just pushing a button and working. You have to assist it to work together, specially that machine needs to help at starting, just like humans don’t work well when they just wake up.”


——They are just like humans.


“Yes, they really are. They have personalities.”


——That’s how you need to get them prepared.


“I believe in doing so to make them work well in a good mood. I clean well and put oil in, which takes 30 to 40 minutes for preparation. If there’s trouble, I won’t regret it. It can’t be helped if I have done what I had to do. I don’t like to think about the cause of the trouble after it happens.”


——Before moving the machines, clean and care for them.


“Yes, I do. There’s some oil left, which happens sometimes. The oil hose that is supposed to reach some parts is sometimes cut off in the middle, or it’s loosen and falling out. In some cases, the oil leaks from the crack in the hose.”


——Oh, I see.


“If I don’t make the hoses clean, I can’t see them. It’s easier to see the cause of troubles if it’s clean.”


——At the beginning of having looms before Mr Chaya joined the company, Ms Tamaki was the only one to handle the belt machinery looms. She studied with the sole desire to weave it, which is fantastic.


“She tried the looms, not the rapier machines from the beginning. I don’t think I had such courage.”


“To pursue extreme softness and comfort, you can’t get them if you don’t use vintage belt machinery looms. Tamaki couldn’t ask someone whenever she wanted, so she decided to do it alone. Thinking back about that time, she played with the loom in a daze. It was a great challenge to be able to handle the old looms and learn how to weave while talking with them many times until she finally produced ‘only one shawl’.


——When he got whole garment flat knitting machines, Mr Yamashita had a hard time making his first knitting products because they were very different from his past experiences. His pieces couldn’t even get accepted by Ms Tamaki. He said that he only remembers sitting on an 18-litre drum for months.


“Yeah, that was a paint can, and it was freezing. At the old laboratory, it chilled to the core… I was also there at that time. My brother-in-law (Sakai) bought me a warm-down coat. As for me, I was weaving by him. The warp threads broke frequently, which was not too much time now. At that time, I was slow and shocked when 100 threads broke. But there was no one to help me.”


——In the previous interview, Ms Akou said a similar thing. When she went to New York, it was time to realize that if she didn’t work, ‘tamaki niime’ wouldn’t spread to the world.


“I think Ms Akou had a hard time trying to develop at a new place in New York. She must have had a lot of pressure. Tamaki is strict, too. Ms Akou couldn’t make any excuses. She had to do it.”


——At that time, Mr Chaya, Mr Yamashita, and Ms Akou each had different positions and faced unknown problems. They were battling at work.


“We had to do it. That’s the fact. We couldn’t keep moving forward if we didn’t do it. We couldn’t ask Tamaki, “Please tie the broken threads. That’s not the way. I had to do it.”


——Everyone had responsibilities that nobody could replace for you.


“When we had the shop 589, we did ‘wash’ at the bath tub because we didn’t have a sink. There were two washers at the bathing place. The flow line was not very good, so we had to take off our shoes to go to the bathing place, and even bending over made posture difficult. After taking a bath, we did ‘wash’…… so it was very hot. (laugh) We washed wool in summer… you wouldn’t understand such situations without the experience … We are so thankful for the fully equipped laboratory facility now…the staff who started with it may not understand it, but I want them to know there was such a time.”


< continued >


At the beginning of ‘tamaki niime’, Tamaki got the looms, wove at her own company, and created ‘one item products’.
With Ms Tamaki, Mr Sakai, Mr Chaya and other staff, they started on an adventure to seek the possibility of their own new ‘creation’.
That was when each of them decided to explore unknown territory for ‘tamaki niime’. Their brave, challenging frontier spirit lives on today.
In the series niime “Discovering New Things by Taking Lessons from the Past”: episode of Mr Takanori Chaya , Chaya, who knows the true face of Tamaki and Sakai, speaks passionately about their personalities, and Hatsuko, his mother-in-law and his overflowing passion for ‘tamaki niime’.

Please look forward to the next episode.

Original Japanese text by Seiji Koshikawa.
English translation by Adam & Michiko Whipple.