The Kubota Collection
The Kubota Collection consists of 104 artistic kimono made using the “Itchiku Tsujigahana” technique. This includes kimono from the Mount Fuji series, some individual pieces and Kubota’s lifetime project “The Symphony of Light”. A masterpiece left incomplete at the time of his death, this series consisted of 36 kimono (he had intended to make 80).
Each work is designed to be an atmospherical painting of a certain season, element or setting, but is also part of a more important landscape which is magically unveiled once the kimono are placed next to each other.
Some of the kimono were featured in Nô theatre plays (a traditional and highly esteemed Japanese art), in fashion shows and music concerts. Due to their fragility and importance for Japan’s textile and design history, and in accordance with Itchiku Kubota’s wish, they are partly visible all year-round in Kawaguchi-ko, Japan, in a museum designed by Kubota. It is also their original birthplace.The kimono showcased on this website are part of the Kubota Collection.
‘Symphony of Light’, a continuous series of kimono of outstanding beauty, is Itchiku Kubota’s most significant and memorable work. It is the product of a unique vision influenced and inspired by his interest in the ever-changing effects of light that, as he once said, “plunges everything into endlessly changing colour.
A stunning mini-series of mystical seascapes in which the line between ocean and sky is blurred, and islands seem to drift in and out, appearing more as mirages than real.
A series of stunning - and haunting - kimono inspired by Mount Fuji.
As Itchiku Kubota worked over the years to refine his work with tsujigahana, he began to incorporate his own version of this method of surface design – what he finally called ‘Itchiku Tsujigahana’ – into the kimono he created. Some of these works he intended to be worn by individuals who understood and appreciated his art, and some he created to be used in Noh or kabuki theatrical productions. Other pieces he held back for his own collection, as they represented milestones in the evolution of his art.
![Individual works](https://thekubotacollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/collection-slide1.png")