The Secret World of Japanese Indigo Craftsmen

Posted by PSEDEN

2025-09-25

On 2025-09-25

In the quiet silence of his studio, Kenta Watanabe squatted on a liquid dye bucket, gently dipping a small amount of white thread into the ink well. As an indestructible darkness, he carefully massaged his tendrils. His hands were stained with indigo shadows, and even after a day of work, his hands were vague. It was a sight, neither strange nor shocking – the traces of quality had defined his life.

As the last remaining Aishi in Japan (the indigo craftsman who produces his own dye), Watanabe devoted to his young men maintaining the endangered pulse of the endangered Aizome, a natural indigo dyeing technique that has centuries of history. In her new documentary My name is blue colorEmmy Award-winning filmmaker Sybilla Patrizia takes a closer look at the interweaving of Watanabe and Shinya Kato who worked with him.

From breathtaking intimacy, glimpses of the dyeing process with rich textures to the landscape of the Japanese countryside, the documentary tells a story that is both detailed and expansive. It is a meditation of the craftsmanship that a new generation of artisans maintain a generation of people, and it is also a meditation of the universal complexity of perception – how we arrest the world and turn it into meaning.

Looking for Indigo

Originally from Austria, Patrizia was attracted to Japanese art, design and architecture since childhood. “Japanese aesthetics does speak to me because it’s so with the growth I was told,” Patricia said.

As a filmmaker, she often turns her cameras to Japanese culture and society. She has addressed a wide variety of topics, from the dark side of the comics industry to the exquisite process of creating Bonito Flakes. When she encounters videos of Indigo dyeing online, she is shocked by the lasting imprint of dye on her skin. “I saw the indigo dye with blue hands and blue arms,” she recalled. “The blue not only washed. [The artisans] Bring it into their daily life – their bodies are immersed in craftsmanship. ”

Further research brought her to Watanabe and Gato, and some of the precious Aishi are still actively practicing art from their workshops in Tokushima Kamiita. With many practitioners of traditional Japanese craftsmanship inherited their professions from family members, both men approached indigo dyeing from an external perspective.

Watanabe first discovered art at a seminar in Tokyo. In the documentary, he recalls this transformative encounter: “I was shocked by the indescribable smell of fermented indigo, the feeling of naked hands immersed in the liquid,” he muses. “[The color] Not just two-dimensional, but so deep that I felt like I would be pulled into it. ”

Living blue guardian

Watanabe suddenly resigned at this moment of sublimation and moved to Tokushima to learn the ins and outs of craftsmanship, but he soon realized that only a few artisans left were the original method of producing indigo dye from scratch.

Traditionally, the one-year process involves cultivating the Japanese indigo plant Tadeai, then fermenting the leaves for three months to form Sukumo, the base material for the liquid dye. After a break, add natural wood ash, sake and wheat bran to Sukumo to promote deoxygenation and activate the dyed microorganisms. This technique, called lyezing, leads to the lifespan of natural dyes and is low-key and effective shade – a kind that cannot be replicated with chemicals.

The labor of love involves two groups of experts: those who tend to plants and prepare living barrels of color, and those who dye fabric threads. Watanabe broke the tradition and began to master both sides of action, believing that the new merger system was necessary to maintain the process in its complete true form.

“Most people attract their beauty when they think of indigo,” Patrizia said. For artisans, this is different. “For them, it’s related to the simple beauty of the result; it’s about understanding the process needed to achieve this result.”

Similarly, for Patrizia, understanding the evolution and symbolism of color in Japanese culture is crucial to faithfully capture the spirit of Aizome. “In the past, ordinary people in Japan were forbidden to wear colors; they could only wear gray, brown and indigo blue.” “So, indigo blue became the color of ordinary people.” In the late Edo period, foreigners among foreigners were called “Japanese blue.”

“For hundreds of years, the rapid progress has almost never seen the indigo blue anymore because we have many different chemical colors,” Patricia continued. “Some colors have become more or less important as the times change and cultures change.”

The shadow of ambiguity

However, what has not changed is the rich and highly personal relationship between the Japanese people and the rich and highly personal relationship. In the documentary, Watanabe discusses the preference for the country’s poetic everyday impression, citing the pale shadow of indigo called “Peeing the Can” – Kamenozoki. “After opening the water jug in the morning, [our ancestors] The reflection of the sky on the water will be seen and named after that. In other words, they will name colors after landscape or emotion. ” he explained.

Partially color-blind Kato is closely related to the inherent subjectivity of our perception of color – the interaction between emotion, memory and even cultural context. For example, the sky of the same twilight poses an inexplicable threat to some, and a wonderful romance to others. The vibrant blue of childhood beach vacations may no longer exist outside of your mind. This ambiguity is precisely Kato’s attraction to his medium. While Aishi’s job is to develop colors, he advises: “End of the time, the color is created on the heads of the people who see it.”

As if bringing his arguments to life, Patrizia uses quietly overwhelming blues to fill the film with food. It is one thing to consider the intellectual meaning of a color, and the other is to see how much is contained in the simple descriptor of “blue”: the hazy Cerulean of the mountain town at the blue moment; the light-colored surface of the stationary pond reflects the sky. Midnight Obi of Awa Odori dancers at the summer festival.

Patrizia suggests that for Watanabe and Gato, Indigo’s art is not just about studying savvy craftsmanship. This is to preserve the color that has long been dedicated to our cherished – both in nature and cultural connections that bind communities. Patricia believes that this profound sense of humility is a fundamental aspect of Japanese heritage craftsmanship.

“There is always the understanding that we are just a small part of the world – this larger system,” she advises. “Even if it’s a story about a small village and Japan’s seemingly tiny craft, I hope the audience can see how we all connect with each other.”