Japanese Fishermen's Coats from Awaji Island

By Sharon Sadako Takeda and Luke Roberts

A lasting contribution to the study of Japanese textiles and to the cultural history of the Inland Sea region, this volume presents a historical ethnography of the fishing villages that produced the sashiko no donza, or fisherman's coat. It provides as well an in-depth analysis of regional textile production, the sashiko tradition in the village of Hokudan, and the iconography of the eloquently stitched designs that appear on the coats. The two scholarly essays are accompanied by a wealth of four-color illustrations of rare coats drawn from the collections of the Hokudan Town Historical and Ethnographic Museum, the Awaji Town Community Center, and the Iwaya Shrine.