In the intro for a little disk-made kongoh braid, I made the following assertion:

There were no braiding disks during the Taisho period!

Ok, so what is a braiding disk and why am I so sure of this?

I'll get to that in just a moment (promise!) but let's get some of the more indirect/less robustly sourced evidence out of the way first:

1. the craft book shown is almost certainly modern
2. in fact, kumi practioners—like those of many other artisanal crafts—tended to be secretive until fairly recently.
3. the long tail of unbraided fiber hanging in the center of the disk is a-historical: as with most old crafts, waste of precious fibers was discouraged;

I don't have access to Japanese craft instruction manuals made before 1975, but the book Miyo uses to learn basic kumihimo looks like your typical modern softbound large format (roughly 8.5 x 9–11") instruction manual —my copy of Kumiko Sudo's lovely Omiyage is a very typical example of exactly the style shown in the video. Compare this with, say, the 1975 Domyo school's instruction manual, in which there's a coloured section in the front, but all actual directions are printed strictly in black and white, with much less white space (denser info) than is typical for a mixed-beginner project book such as Miyo is using. (She and Yurie actually discuss assorted textile projects.)

What I do have exposure to decades of looking at craft books in English, and I'm guessing there were a lot of parallels: as printing technology improved, (relatively) inexpensive craft books proliferated overall, but concomitantly both number of projects and their difficultly level tended to decrease—compare the number of techniques and patterns in Virginia Osterland's 1971 Bouquets from Beads to Arlene Baker's 2002 Beads in Bloom —I was too lazy to count the number of patterns, but the Osterland has nearly double the number of pages and it certainly has advanced techniques I've not encountered elsewhere. Also, all its explanatory text is in line drawings; photography is reserved exclusively for the finished product, and color appears only as a center insert of some 20 odd pages. The Baker, otoh, is colour throughout, even in explanatory diagrams, and all photographs are coloured.

Go back further—to a 1957 Good Photography's Darkroom Guide and only the cover is in colour; the rest is exclusively black and white. I have a knitting manual of roughly the same vintage I can't be arsed to locate, but all of it is in black and white. So is the classic Southard on bobbin lacemaking, which I would say technically is the closest western craft to kumi in terms of technique—both use bobbins and interlacing to produce their textiles. All of them are much text heavier than modern craft books such as the one shown in either the manga or anime versions of My Happy Marriage.

Yes, there are block-printed coloured manuals of things in Japan—you're talking about the place famous for ukiyo-e, after all. But I'm guessing those manuals weren't cheap. —In fact, instruction books of any kind were (as I understand it) much less common a century ago, because that sort of knowledge was far more likely to be passed on, mother to daughter, or master to apprentice.

Thus, I don't have actual “proof” that her manual is ahistorical, but trends in publishing certainly suggest it.

Moving on.

Okay, back to the braiding disk—what, specifically is that, and how does it differ from period tools (such as a marudai)?

Wellllll, it's a handheld foam (or cardboard) circle, generally 4–6" (100-150mm) in diameter with a hole in the center, and quarter inch (6mm) slots cut radially around the perimeter (at roughly quarter-inch to 1 cm intervals) used for making braids, typically 8 strands (though I almost always use 16). The slots, marked by decorative indents, are nearly invisible,^[1] as they must grip the warps tightly enough to maintain tension; but overall the disk must be flexible enough to slip the warps (i.e. the individual strands) in and out of the slots. In other words, the device's tensioning works by friction.

Thus wood is unsuitable, because slots narrow enough to grip thin silk^[2] would catch and tear it, and also because it's rigid.

But the real kicker is that foam disks were developed by Makiko Tada sometime (I believe)^[3] in the 2000s. (It would be interesting to know the exact date, because Roderick Owen documented assorted square and round cardboard plates in his 1995 Braids, for whom he referenced a western braider named Lynn Paulin, who documented it in ’78,^[4] having got the idea from Esther Warner Dendel, who learnt the braid (the tabby-weave known in Japan as Maru-genji) made on them from Africans using their "very flexible fingers and toes"(Owen, 1995, p. 32) only, developing the card as an aid to westerners.^[5] But by ’95, I had no interest in something so clearly inferior to a real marudai; it wasn't until the smaller, easier-to-use and much more durable miniature foam disks came out that I became interested in this slower, but far more portable, version of kumi, sometime around 2008 or 2009.^[6]

So, why the ahistorical goof?

What I think happened, is that the original mangaka looked up kumihimo, found pictures of Makiko Tada-san's foam disk, which after all is now (by far) the most common method for braids, using that as reference without realizing that the threads are held in slots, and that they typically come in sets of 8. She depicted the simplest braid structure in the finished cord, a tabby weave of some sort (though in fact, for technical reasons having to do with ease of using a disk a different structure called kongoh is by far the most common made on these devices.)

The anime series, which appears to take a lot of reference from the manga ^[8] probably looked up some more references (not least because they had to actually depict the movements of kumi being done), realized that the white foam disk shown in the manga couldn't possibly be right, but neither, evidently was the marudai, which would have been an expensive investment for a poor woman wanting to make a one-off braid and so substituted a wooden version of the disk since after all, marudai, in fact all traditional^[9] kumi tools, are made of wood.^[10]

In other words, Makiko Tada's reason for creating the foam braiding disk—to make kumihimo easy and approachable for everyone, instead being reserved to textile specialists, was so successful that kumihimo is now ubiquitous, available for anyone to try for the price of a kit costing a few dollars at any big-box craft store, or, for the enterprising person, you can simply craft a disposable plate from cardboard—which in fact is what Tada's earliest models were made of.^[11]

Quite the change from being on a 300 member worldwide list 30 odd years ago...

A device that would have been period, however, would be a marudai, or round stand—a wooden disk, very smoothly polished, about 9” in diameter with a two inch diameter hole in the center. Instead of slots, the warps are tensioned by winding them around odd-fashion wooden-thread-spool like tama (weighted bobbins) which hang down around the perimeter of the kagami, or mirror (i.e. the device's circular top).

The movements for the two devices are mathematically the same, but are much more efficient on the marudai, which being supported on its legs, allows the braider to use both hands at the same time, instead of using one to hold the disk while the other manipulates half of the pair of strands that would be moved simultaneously on the marudai. More over, the warps slide smoothly instead of having to be inserted or removed from the slots and tensioned^[12] ; the lead-filled weighted tama on the ends do that automatically. (Even faster is the much larger takadai, though these are typically used only to make flat braids, and faster yet is loop style braiding, often by teams of braiders, but by the Taisho era, the technique had been lost, and wouldn't be re-discovered until some time in the latter half of the 20ca.)

The manga shows a simple tabby weave (which absolutely makes sense for a beginner) but in the anime they decided to spice it up a bit with a thin gold netting over a poofy, or textured braid. (Because they changed the type of braid, is a major reason why I think they must've done some additional research—where else would they have gotten the idea?) Honestly, it looks to me most like the pattern on the bottom half p. 60 of Roderick Owen's book...which specifically states can't be made with the disk method, but must be done on a marudai (wrapped with a towel no less, to prevent the tama from spinning.)^[13]

Even more obvious evidence that the artists for both the manga and anime didn't really understand how kumi works is embedded in the fact that, besides failing to depict the slots (correctly)(or understand their necessity) is that the braider is working with only 7 strands. Many braids and all traditional kumi is set up with even numbers, (because it's started by folding long strands in half...) typically in groups of 4: 4, 8, and 16 strand braid structures are the most common for marudai (or disk), especially for round braids.

Not to mention in one screencap I counted 2 light violet and 2 gold warps, and in another, 3 light violet and 1 gold, which simply can't happen without splicing, a big no-no in Japanese braiding. Moreover, none of the light violet shows up in the finished braid, which makes no sense, nor is the gold significantly thinner than the purple, which also makes no sense if it's to be a delicate accent for a ‘netted’ effect.

According to an article by Nakauchi Yoshio titled “Iga and Modern Kumihimo” in Exquisite, young women, confined to home and wanting to make a bit of money, did braid cords roughly contemporaneously with My Perfect Marriage, particularly in Iga prefecture. So it's not impossible that Miyo could've been exposed to kumi, especially if she lived in Iga, or was somehow exposed to a braider from that area—though unlikely: my impression is that until Tada-sensei's foam disk became popular, kumi was more akin to a specialized craft, analogous, perhaps, to bobbin lacemaking—as opposed to knitting or crochet, which are widespread enough that any textile oriented person could pick it up. This, again, is a subtle point, but adds support to my thesis.

But that doesn't mean Miyo couldn't’ve made a braid! The narrative just needs slight adjustment, and so my personal in-story explanation goes something like this:

Instead of flipping through a craft book, Yuri (the housekeeper) and Miyo might have discussed various little textile goodies, such as drawstring bags (hm, mebbe too feminine...?) temari (whoops, children's toy), or...hey, a piece of kumihimo for a hair tie? But how to make? The protagonist, owing to her Cinderella status, wouldn't’ve been allowed to make or learn such a relatively high-status sort of piece-work, but Yurie theoretically might have known how, and the old country house in which they live seems like a prime candidate for having an unused marudai (& tama) lying around somewhere in a closet, perhaps when more women lived there and needed obijime (the visible cord tied around an obi, or woman's kimono sash).^[14]

If you wanted to go all out, Yurie might've been one of the very last living people to have learned kute-uchi, hand/finger loop braiding, which requires no tools at all.

The larger point—that the bond developing between Mio and Kiyoka and her growing self-confidence is shown by her making something for him that entails going outside her cooking-cleaning skillset, and includes a creative component (choosing the colours of the braid)^[15] —remains. So in that sense, I was delighted to see her engaging in a craft I can do—even if, as is so often true of art, it were imperfectly rendered.^[16]

Whew! Having plowed through all that, howza ’bout a link back to the main page actually showing a braid.

linkies! aka bibliography

• short history of Japanese textiles
• history of kumihimo & domyo school (in Japanese) (5 min, no subtitles)
• Yusoku Kumihimo Domyo's website (english version)
• article that includes photos of historical kumi equipment, including kakudai in Japanese; this old (60s? 70s? 80s?) vid (music only, no sound) from the Domyo school shows an older head of the school? Master Craftsman: Kawashima Takeichi (川島武一さん) , and is the only resource I've found thus far that shows the use of those little square things, plus other tools for setting up/measuring the ends, winding the silk etc. (Think they've mostly gone to western style rotating devices, as used with yarn nowadays—still all by hand, but much more efficient.) Okay, here's another with a quite old rotating square thingie
• history of synthetic fibers first developed in 1800s; rayon/viscose which is “semi-synthetic" is among the earliest, and n.b.! one variety, cuprammonium is currently only manufactured in Japan. N.b. rayon takes dye well!
• via interweave Tachibani Museum and Nishioka Chizuru has developed tools to replicate 4 hand kara uchi braiding Amazing. Her spouse does other parts of armor restoration; one of Nishioka's gaksei/students
• Hara Kikumatsufigured out a kikko braid on the marudai; evidently there's a book with dozens? of (exclusively) kikko patterns by the woman who made this video?, Claudia Wollny (& btw Wollny did that beautiful sakura genji braid I featured years ago...; page includes a nice photo of that weird square loom (karakumidai) with pegs on all 4 sides as well as some nice historical notes
• This iga school vid includes a fun looking large wheel driven device for twisting multiple ends (& possibly loading tama as well) at approx time stamp 3:24 Much of the 12 min is takadai
• Another iga school vid, this one showing traditional —and written-only!— patterns for a takadai braid at the time stamp (2:00) (english and japanese subtitles) The gold and cherry blossom flat braid is quite pretty, btw.
• I like this vid because there's an excellent picture of a kakudai setup at 2:30
• Relatively recent iga school vid with takadai and marudai demos.
• How to make yourself crazy trying to make a flat braid with jury rigged takadai (using, among other things, clothespins...

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn