Hōmongi: a pattern across the seams

Hōmongi is a category of women’s kimono, commonly recognised by an eba design: motifs continue across seams to make a composition over separate panels. The chest, shoulders, sleeves and hem may share that design. Eba describes pattern placement, not a flower or a dye; furisode and tomesode can also use it.

For an eba design, white cloth is cut to size and temporarily basted into the shape of a kimono. A design is drawn across this shape so that motifs meet across the adjoining panels. Hōmongi may use yūzen dyeing, embroidery or applied foil: the category is not one textile technique.

Once the drawing is in place, a basic Kyō-yūzen sequence takes the basted garment apart. The separate pieces are held taut with bamboo shinshi stretchers for resist application and dyeing, with steaming, washing and finishing also required. They are then basted back into garment form as age-eba. Pattern positions were established on the first garment shape; the cloth is worked flat between the two bastings.

Tsukesage patterns are usually placed on a bolt of cloth so that they face appropriately when worn. Some garments sold as tsukesage-hōmongi join motifs across the front-panel seams. Tomesode concentrate their main design below the waist, while hōmongi may also carry it over the upper body. Flower size alone cannot identify the category.

Both married and unmarried women wear hōmongi. It commonly serves as semi-formal dress for wedding guests, tea gatherings and parties. The wearer’s role, fabric and decoration affect the choice: attending a wedding and making a less formal social outing need not call for the same combination.

Common fabrics include silk crêpe and figured silk; examples also use tsumugi cloth or synthetic fibres. Tsumugi hōmongi tend towards fashionable outings, with different dress conventions from ceremonial dye-decorated garments. Awase is lined, hitoe unlined, and open weaves such as ro and sha provide summer options, coordinated with the under-kimono and sash.

For a formal occasion, a fukuro obi is a common partner, tied in arrangements such as the double-taiko knot. The sash covers part of the pattern at the waist while the sleeves, shoulders and hem remain visible. An opened-out garment and a worn one therefore reveal the composition differently.

The term hōmonfuku, or visiting clothes, was applied to kimono in the early twentieth century. Press material from 1912, assembled by the National Museum of Ethnology, records Mitsukoshi selling such clothes. The category then included komon and omeshi as well as what is now associated with eba designs. The evidence supports a role for department-store naming and promotion, rather than a single birthday for the social use of such clothes.

Silk crêpe forms the ground of Green with Crimson. The acquisition record links its painterly patches of woodland light to brushwork and coloured paste. Smaller flowers use fine resist-paste outlines and applied colour: the resist limits dye spread at the edges. Broad dappled foliage and more sharply bounded flowers involve different treatments.

Moriguchi Kunihiko’s 2013 yūzen hōmongi Minori arranges geometric motifs on white. The kimono’s design also provided the basis for a Mitsukoshi shopping bag. A continuous garment composition can use abstraction as well as flowers and birds.