Masterpieces at the Foot of the Mountain: Kubota Itchiku’s Kimono Art in Yamanashi Prefecture

The main entrance to the museum features a carved wooden door Itchiku bought on a visit to India. Musasabi, Japanese flying squirrels, nest in the branches along the top of its frame.

The expansive garden came largely from Itchiku’s own ideas about how it should appear, but was designed and implemented by Kitayama Yasuo, a celebrated traditional landscape artist from Kyoto.

The entrance to the New Wing, with its striking limestone pillars.

The bead gallery on the second floor.

Venetian rosetta beads form an elegant necklace (left); the Phoenician beads at right are the oldest in Itchiku’s collection, dating back some 25 centuries.

The Main Building atop its stone foundation.

The exhibit hall is some 200 square meters in area, and is topped by a beam-supported roof 13 meters high at its top point.

Robes on display at the museum. At left is the 1991 Ohn (菀), depicting a golden Mount Fuji; Miyahara Sakuo, apprentice to Itchiku, assisted in its creation.

Miyahara worked alongside Itchiku for a quarter-century, right up to the master’s death.

The Itchiku Tsujigahana technique involves sewing the cloth, tying parts of it off, dyeing it, steaming it to set the color, rinsing it in cold water, and removing the ties. This is repeated dozens of times to achieve the desired design.

On display at the museum are some of Itchiku’s preferred chemical dyes, which he imported from Germany, and the hair brushes he used to apply them.

A museum panel shows the final layout of the Symphony of Light, with the finished works in place.

When the weather is clear, the café terrace on the New Wing’s second floor offers fine views of Japan’s highest peak.

Itchiku-an, the tearoom at the back of the exhibition space, is a place to enjoy waterfall views along with matcha tea and traditional sweets.

A cave at the top of the hillside garden houses two sculptures Itchiku dedicated to his mother: the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Fugen Bosatsu), seated on an elephant, at right and a figure of a woman and child on the left.