The term kofu, or the “old textile” refers to the textiles woven before the WWII. Back then, people wore kimono as their daily outfits, lived in the traditional Japanese housing and practiced the seasonal Shinto ritual. After the war, such traditional life style started to disappear. Textiles with a variety of characteristic had been produced in all over Japan, based on geological factors such as production places of silkworms and cotton plants or the distance from the capital, in addition to historical factors. Each of such textiles has the name of the production locations in their names, such as, Edo Komon, Ueda Tsumugi, Tango Chirimen or Kaga Yuzen. Each of them exhibits examples of Japanese textile techniques of dyeing and pattern design such as stamp dyeing or tie-dyeing.
