Kijoka bashofu and the Bashofu Kaikan

Bashofu is the oldest of Okinawa's textiles and is said to have been woven by around the 13th century. Long plant fibres keep the cloth from sticking to the skin in heat and humidity, a quality valued in a hot climate. The Ryukyu court sent it as tribute to Ming China, and after Satsuma took control in 1609 records show 3,000 rolls sent there. Kunigami district wove about half of Okinawa's output in 1915.

The Battle of Okinawa and the years after it almost ended the craft. American forces cut down Kijoka's banana groves as breeding grounds for malaria mosquitoes, and only a few women kept weaving from wild plants in the hills. Toshiko Taira had studied weaving in Kurashiki at the end of the war, and when she came home in 1946 she set out to keep Okinawa's cloth alive. From 1947 she rebuilt bashofu and sold placemats and table runners to the American military community to make it pay. She paid everyone in the long chain of the craft at least what other work paid, so the makers would stay. She was named a Living National Treasure in 2000 and died in 2022 at 101.

Each step takes years to learn. Makers strip and boil the stalks, clean the fibre, knot it end to end into thread and twist it, then dye some of it with indigo or sharinbai bark for checks and kasuri patterns. The Bashofu Kaikan in Kijoka shows a film of the process on the ground floor, and upstairs you can watch makers at work. It is the only place in the prefecture where visitors can see the craft this closely.