Itobashou plant and Bashofu textile close-ups

Photograph of Itobashou plants and close-up shots of woven textiles.

Bashofu fibers are obtained from the Okinawan Itobashou banana plant.  The bottom right image is a zoomed-in portion at the white box in the upper image. The arrowhead on the close-up points to a handtied weaver’s knot. Unlike cotton fabrics, artisans manually tie the fibers in each of these knots by hand – and this is done 22,000 times for a single piece of kimono cloth. Scale bar on the upper photo is 10mm, lower is 1mm.

Date:
10 November 2025
Credit:
Koji Koizumi

Copyright OIST (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, 沖縄科学技術大学院大学). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

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