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For many years, Itchiku Kubota, dreamed of establishing an unusual and beautiful museum where people could visit to view and enjoy his work....

Itchiku Kubota was among those artists who fell under Fuji’s spell. To him, Fuji was a sacred symbol that revealed new qualities each time he saw it....

Itchiku Kubota was well-known not only for his revival of the lost art form of tsujigahana but also for his bold and vivid imagination as expressed through his kimono designs. Yet his artistic vision did not stop there: Just as he had breathed new life into a long-forgotten technique for surface design, Kubota also had a passionate desire to transform the way kimono were perceived and worn....

Itchiku Kubota considered many factors in creating his extraordinary kimono, and his choice of method depended on the type of kimono to be made. Pattern and color were just two of the factors that went into the decision making process, as Kubota continued to develop new techniques through his life. All aspects of production required the kind of patience and skill that can only be gained by years of experience, as one Itchiku kimono could take up to a year to complete. The intensive labor and care required in the making of these special garments can be understood by reviewing some of the steps involved in the process....

Kubota often used the terms ‘seas’ and ‘oceans’ almost interchangeably in his work. In this series, the seas – or oceans – are vast and apparently uncontained, with no confining land masses to inhibit their flow. Although many of his other kimono designs set parameters to the waters he depicts, in these, the illusion of freedom of movement is paramount....

Itchiku Kubota’s interest in the theatre began in 1940, and it was an interest that was to stay with him for the rest of his life. When he was a young man of only twenty-three, he worked for a period with a master of stage design for kabuki and shinpa (‘New School’). Kubota produced costumes with special designs for well-known actors and actresses, some of whom remained as personal as well as professional acquaintances for many years after....

San, the kimono that serves as the keynote image for the Kubota Kimono Collection, is one that had special personal relevance for Itchiku Kubota....

The Symphony of Light, a contiguous series of kimono of outstanding beauty, is Itchiku Kubota’s most significant and memorable work....

After a bleak three-year internment in a Siberian prisoner of war camp during World War II disrupted his career, Kubota eventually returned to Tokyo and his craft as a yūzen dyer. But he had not forgotten his vow to recreate tsujigahana and spent many months thinking of how its original process and method could be reconstructed....

Tsujigahana is the name given to a group of rare and beautiful textiles that were in fashion in Japan in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries....

Itchiku Kubota (1917-2003) was an innovative artist whose spectacular creations gave new meaning to the art of the kimono. He revived and modernized a sixteenth-century decorative technique known as tsujigahana (“flowers at the crossroads”), a technique that was once thought lost forever....