Sarashi Fundoshi - Part One

Today, direct from Japan, I give you sarashi. A new fabric….I haven’t talked about weave in a while! 

Based on my own limited research, sarashi is the traditional fabric used in Japan for fundoshi - especially during festivals. The fabric is also used for household items and clothing. The Nara prefecture is said to produce the highest quality of sarashi. In Nara, there are still hand-woven workshops that use the traditional hemp as the fiber, like 

Nakagawa Masashichi.

The thread used in making sarashi is fine. The weave is very similar to a muslin in that the warp and weft appear evenly spun. It isn’t as sheer as some of the voiles I’ve purchased and not as thick as gauze. 

As you can see from the packaging, this is 10 meters of fabric. It is continuous in length with no seems. It is 13 inches wide and finished on each edge. This version of sarashi is made of cotton, not hemp. 

I purchased the fabric from fabric tales.  I didn’t encounter any issues ordering from Japan, but your mileage may vary, as they say…..

For the shoot, I kept the lighting a bit stark and white to better show off the fabric. I did place a dimmer back-light at an angle to try to give a sharper contrast. 

I keep my fundoshi rolled up to avoid wrinkles when using them in a shoot.

For this set of photos, I am trying to show the beginning stages of putting this fundoshi on. It did take me a couple of tries. A hint I have is that this needs to be tight. The volume of fabric being wrapped will easily droop and unravel if it isn’t tightly wrapped. This is probably why people help one another during festival preparation. Doing it alone takes a bit of patience and trial and error. 

fundoshi…as traditional as I can get without guidance from a professional….

fabric...100% cotton sarashi

photography…nicely contrasted lighting to highlight the fabric

And now....on to the rest of the group....

Wrapping that large roll of fabric and keeping everything tight got to be a bit of a strain. Let the unravelling begin!

Next time on fundoshi, fabric and photos:  The khaki cheesecloth makes an encore performance in a never before seen design…..