Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Liza Dalby

Review by: Patricia Anawalt

American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 154-155
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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154 * VOL.97, NO. 1 . MARCH
ANTHROPOLOGIST
AMERICAN 1995
the social roles of polished stone "blades" (sometimes
hafted, sometimes not) as symbols of prestige and social
standing and as elements of social relations, in display and
as gifts, or in exchanges at a number of important social
and ceremonial occasions.
This book should interest and stimulate archaeolo-
gists, particularly those interested in the Neolithic (or
comparable periods), offering close analogies to the over-
all systematic relationships archaeology reveals among all
aspects of polished stone axe/adze production, exchange,
and use and their environmental, technological, and social
contexts-relationships so consistent and systematic that
they offer strong hope and encouragement for the build-
ing of similar models for understanding prehistoric stone
axe/adze manufacture, trade, and use.
However, one may find certain disappointments and
frustrations. First, the maps, although relatively numer-
ous, are quite inadequate. Without any tedious counting,
I estimate that half of the geographical and place names
that appear in the text cannot be found on any map in the
book.
Second, and more important, much of the statistical
data that would be most pertinent to archaeological com-
parisons or modeling are lacking. To give only the most
salient example, it is clear that there are significant pat-
terns of decreasing proportions of polished stone
axes/adzes made from any specific rock type in villages
further and further from the source quarries for that rock.
These patterns are mentioned often, and they are de-
scribed as dependent upon geographical patterns of avail-
ability of raw materials, patterns of trade and exchange,
and of social relations among groups of similar or differ-
ent linguistic and cultural affiliation. However, these pat-
terns only rarely are illustrated concretely with the statis-
tical data necessary to define them precisely, and even
those rare illustrations are incomplete and graphically
vague (and not obviously consistent), making impossible
any close or rigorous comparisons to archaeological data.
Given that the statistical patterns of "fall-off"in propor-
tions of raw materials for polished stone axes have been
the basis for some significant discussions of models for
prehistoric social and cultural relations (very comparable
to some of the discussions in this book), it is not only a
pity and a frustration to find these data omitted, but a real
surprise as well. Such omissions unfortunately reduce the
value of this work for detailed ethnoarchaeological com-
parisons or model-building.
In spite of such criticisms, I not only enjoyed this
book but was both impressed and excited by it. I am sure
that it will be followed by other, perhaps more statistically
detailed, publications, and that this rich body of ethnoar-
chaeological data will continue for some time to generate
useful and stimulating analyses and interpretations. m
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Kimono: Fashioning Culture. Liza Dalby. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1993. 212 pp.
PATRICIAANAWALT
Center for the Study of Regional Dress
Fowler Museum of Cultural History
Few artifacts are as revealing of their cultural context
as clothing; few garments reflect their culture better than
the national costume of Japan, the kimono ("object of
wear"). Today this long robe with its wide sleeves and
broad sash functions exclusively as special-purpose cloth-
ing, worn occasionally by middle-class women but regu-
larly only by the geisha. Because the kimono is mandatory
in geisha life, these hostesses have mastered the requisite
body language needed to wear the narrow, constricting
garment gracefully (the torso often must be bound and/or
padded to attain the desired cylindrical silhouette).
Liza Dalby lived and worked in a geisha community
for fourteen months during which she wore kimono on a
daily basis. Thus, she is uniquely qualified to comment on
contemporary aspects of the costume. As background,
however, Dalby first discusses the robe in a cultural-his-
torical context, beginning in the seventh century when
Japanese rulers strove to enhance their island realm by
consciously adopting features they found particularly im-
pressive in the court life of China, then East Asia's most
powerful culture. Among the concepts they imported was
the wearing of enveloping silken robes.
The Japanese kimono, with its distinctive T-form
shape, began as an undergarment at the Heian imperial
court (9th to 12th century), but by its golden age in the
Edo period (early 17th to mid-19th century), when the
kimono was known as the kosode ("small sleeves" robe),
the garment had evolved into highly decorative outerwear
for elite urban dwellers.
Having traced the kimono chronologically, Dalby
considers the robe's role in the modem world, providing
a structural analysis of the costume and discussing the
rise of academies that teach today's women how to prop-
erly wear and move in the constraining garment. She then
jumps back to the 12th century to discuss the inception of
an aesthetic that still influences Japanese sensibilities,
one in which plants, animals, weather, colors, and espe-
cially the seasons became terms of a poetic idiom defining
cultured existence. This language of nature attained a life
of its own in a coherent system of meanings, metaphors,
and nuances (p. 12).
Using stylized geometric diagrams, Dalby painstak-
ingly reconstructs the Heian cycle of layered robes that
were worn through a yearly round. Regrettably, this his-
torical schema is the book's only use of color; all drawings
and photos are black-and-white, which precludes docu-
mentation of the intricate interplay of subtle palette and
evocative design that often makes the kimono a work of
art.

With the late-19th-century encroachment of the in-
dustrialized Western nations into Asia, the Japanese
again-as in the seventh century-made a policy decision
to absorb and master the customs of an outside power,
including assimilation of foreign clothing. As the rulers
officially embraced Western dress in its entirety, degrees
of bizarre and incongruous amalgamation began to appear
on urban streets: women in kimono worn with high-button
shoes or bustle-like sashes; men sporting bowler hats or
fringed shawls. It was against this background that the
eponymous term kimono came into being to distinguish
indigenous from Western-style attire, and the woman's
robe was elevated to become the national costume of
Japan, symbol not only of feminine beauty but of Japane-
seness in a foreign-infiltrated environment.
Kimono: Fashioning Culture is particularly insight-
ful in its discussions of Heian-period and present-day
kimono. The coverage of the Edo period, so important to
understanding the modem robe, is somewhat spotty. This
era is better explored-both in text and colored illustra-
tion-in Gluckman and Takeda's When Art Became Fash-
ion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan (Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, 1992), and Stinchecum's Kosode: 16th-
19th Century Textiles from the Nomura Collection (Ja-
pan Society, 1983). Nonetheless, Dalby's book certainly
can be recommended to those interested in the evolution
and contemporary utilization of kimono, the monitoring
of culture change through clothing, and the gaining of
deeper insight into the tightly woven web that is Japanese
society. :
Conserving Culture A New Discourse on Heritage. Mary
Hufford, ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994, 264
pp.
DOLORESROOT
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities
The past 30 years has been a period of growth in the
number of private organizations and public agencies com-
mitted to programs in the arts and humanities, conserva-
tion of land and wildlife, preservation of the built environ-
ment, and maintenance of living cultural diversity. This
expansion reflects the passage of federal legislation be-
tween 1965 and 1976, for example, the National Founda-
tion for the Arts and Humanities Act, the National Historic
Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act
and the American Folklife Preservation Act, which com-
plement and augment the work of existing agencies. Dur-
ing this 30-year period, manufacturing-based industries
and agriculture have declined, but cultural tourism, which
fosters and depends on the preservation of past lifeways
and landscapes, has become a growth industry.
Conserving Culture is the outcome of a conference
held in Washington, D.C., in May 1990, which brought
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BOOK
REVIEWS 155
together anthropologists, folklorists, public historians
and other cultural workers to create a new, integrated
vision for cultural conservation. A strength of the book is
the "view from the trenches"-the interplay between the-
ory and practice in grappling with cultural policy. A weak-
ness of the volume is the failure to contextualize cultural
conservation within the power relations shaping cultural
policy. This criticism notwithstanding, Conserving Cul-
ture draws attention to the significant work being done by
academically trained cultural workers and the importance
of anthropological perspectives and methods in their en-
deavors.
An introductory essay by Mary Hufford concisely
illuminates the issues and framework for cultural conser-
vation. She provides a historical overview of the heritage
system and identifies the problems with its arbitrary divi-
sions-history, folklife, and environmental preserva-
tion-and the top-down approach to management and
interpretation. Against this historical backdrop she pro-
poses an interdisciplinary approach to cultural conserva-
tion that actively involves the people affected, and she
uses ethnography to evaluate the cultural and political
significance of resources. While Hufford's cultural con-
servation framework challenges neat disciplinary divi-
sions, the book is organized into three familiar sections:
Conserving History, Protecting Biocultural Diversity, and
Encouraging Folklife. The 17 essays critique the present
heritage system and illustrate with case studies the cul-
tural conservation framework.
The six articles in the history section are based on
experiences in the field. They question prevailing con-
cepts, assumptions, or models: the definition of history,
which is key to idenfifying cultural resources and historic
places to be preserved (Downer et al.), the employment
of nostalgia for the "edenic past" or natural landscapes as
a justification for preservation (Abrahams), and historic
preservation models that are based on features of the
physical landscape rather than on the accumulation of
social relationships interacting with the physical environ-
ment (DeNatale). The dominant culture's grip on the heri-
tage business has implications for the meaning ascribed
to places and the diversity of places preserved. Makingthe
connection between place and voice, Abrams illustrates
with an example from Pennsylvania coal towns how
places can have multiple meanings depending on people's
social identities, and Low extends this argument to in-
clude the plurality of cultural aesthetics in the preserva-
tion of places. DeNatale, Abrams, and others in the vol-
ume stress the importance of connecting the past to
people's lives and experiences today.
The relationship between the preservation of natural
landscapes and resources and tourism is the central
theme of the articles on biocultural diversity. These in-
clude a discussion of the ecological and cultural impact of
tourism in Thailand (Chambers), the hegemony of wildlife