130 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | April 2020 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk
photographs. It seemed both
wonderful and entirely foreign,
like a dragon perching unexpect-
edly in a London house.
Another memory: sitting on the dark parquet floor
of my grandparents’ apartment in New York. My grand-
father is unwell and it is hard for us to go out. So, we
linger indoors. On the table is a bowl of fruit cut for me.
All day the television is set to the NHK, the Japan-
ese version of the BBC. My mother
is translating the period drama as
we watch. There is a rivalry between
two court ladies, one rich and cruel,
one poorer but good. They encounter each other
by chance on a narrow wooden walkway. The
rich woman says to the poor: ‘Nice kimono.’
My mother explains this is an insult. The
poorer woman has not been able to update her
kimono with the season. I am confused. My
mother tells me that in Japan at that time, thehe first kimono I
saw hung as art was
above a staircase.
The arms were out-
stretched like the wooden Jesus
I’d seen in museums, or my mother
when she wanted me to run to her. It
was tangerine silk. A flock of finely
embroidered cranes, white-winged and red-
capped, flung into flight across it. The light
caught their feathers. I wanted to touch it, to press my
face against it. But it was beyond my reach. Perhaps as an adult,
I might have been able to grab the hem. It hovered above the hands
of the child who did not yet know her multiplication tables.
Later, I asked my mother why it was there. She replied that the
house owners, an English couple, had spent many years in Japan. My
mother had not understood my question. What
I had meant was more sweeping: why would you
hang clothes on a wall rather than wear them?
Why was it so beautiful, who had made such a
thing, who had worn it, was there a chance that
I would someday stroke the backs of those birds?
Perhaps the mistress of the house might have
answered such questions, but I was a little intimi-
dated – she was a creature of gold and glitter.
I could not, at the time, relate that finery to the
kimono I’d seen on my dead relatives in faded
T
TALK ING POINTS
Right: Rowan
Hisayo Buchanan’s
great-grandmother.
Below, far right: a
detail of a kimono
made in India in
about 1700 for the
Dutch marketEXHIBITIONS
Ahead of the V&A’s vibrant
exhibition uncovering the history
of the kimono, Rowan Hisayo Buchananreflects on the personal stories
that are woven into thesegarments
Above, left and
bottom: panels
from a
19th-century
triptych showing
kimono fabrics.
Below: a
woman’s
short-sleeve
kimono (kosode)M ATER IAL
W ITNESSES
Above: a 1934 silk
crepe wedding
kimono. Right:
a 19th-century
Japanese-tailored
men’s under-kimono