Change Tradition to Preserve It—The Strange World Where the Division of Labor Survives Even as Artisans Disappear

Last night, I watched a television documentary about Arimatsu shibori, a traditional Japanese tie-dyeing craft.

My wife has become interested in traditional Japanese clothing, so we watched it together. But before long, I found myself more interested in the structure of the industry than in the kimono.

Arimatsu shibori has long been produced through a highly specialized division of labor. A single product passes through many stages before completion, with a specialist artisan responsible for each one.

The problem is that the number of those artisans keeps declining.

The program showed how the traditional division of labor was becoming unworkable and how some artisans were trying to learn several stages of the process themselves.

When you think about it, that is only natural.

If an industry once had ten artisans and now has only three, anyone who wants to keep making the product has little choice but to perform more than one job.

Yet some people within the industry reportedly object, saying that this “disrupts the rules of the division of labor” or “takes work away from other artisans.”

That surprised me.

They say it takes work away from other artisans, but was the problem not that those artisans are disappearing?

Before worrying about someone’s work being taken away, they should worry that the work itself is about to vanish.

Are They Protecting Tradition or Old Industry Rules?

I have heard similar stories about traditional Japanese dolls and other heritage industries.

Perhaps the things we call “tradition” contain not only techniques handed down for centuries, but also industry structures created during the Showa era and Japan’s period of rapid economic growth.

The division of labor, trade associations, and distribution channels must all have been systems designed for the market conditions of their time.

If we bundle them together and declare that nothing can change because “this is how it has always been done,” it becomes difficult to tell what we are actually protecting.

They preserve rules created when there were too many artisans even in an era when there are too few.

Then, when the last artisan retires, everyone can go out of business together in harmony.

At least they will have the satisfaction of knowing that the division-of-labor system was preserved until the very end.

Nambu Ironware Did the Opposite

On the other hand, some traditions have actively changed their form in order to survive.

Nambu ironware is one example.

Traditional Nambu ironware brings to mind a heavy black cast-iron kettle. But few modern households use one every day.

Some manufacturers therefore partnered with overseas designers, created colorful teapots and modern cookware, and expanded into international markets.

Artisans from the past might see them and complain, “That is not Nambu ironware.”

But if the casting techniques survive, the products sell, and the artisans can earn a living, then the tradition remains alive.

By contrast, if artisans keep making iron kettles exactly as they did in the past, no one buys them, and the last artisan retires, the tradition ends.

Which does more to preserve tradition: protecting the form while the technique dies, or changing the form so the technique survives?

I would choose the latter.

Preservation Is Not the Same as Passing a Tradition On

Keeping an old product exactly as it was, made in exactly the same way, is preservation.

That is appropriate for museums and cultural properties. There is also value in documenting techniques that have been lost.

But survival as an industry is a different matter.

If artisans continue making an obsolete product in its traditional form, they will disappear when the customers do.

Passing a tradition on does not mean freezing the finished products of the past in time.

It means preserving the essential techniques and changing everything else.

Japanese traditional culture itself did not begin in its present form.

Materials, tools, distribution, and customer preferences have all changed. The practices that survived by absorbing influences from overseas are the ones we, generations later, now call “tradition.”

No one suddenly stood up one day centuries ago and declared:

“All right, no more changes from this point onward!”

Eating Bread in Kyoto, the Capital of Tradition

As I thought about this, I remembered something I once heard about a Kyoto cuisine chef.

He said that he eats sandwiches at a coffee shop every morning.

Kyoto is one of Japan’s great traditional cities. It has temples and shrines, Kyoto cuisine, the tea ceremony, and long-established businesses.

But Kyoto is also a city where people eat a great deal of bread.

Being a Kyoto cuisine chef does not mean eating rice and miso soup every morning. He eats bread and drinks coffee.

That does not destroy the tradition of Kyoto cuisine.

The people of Kyoto do not live as they did centuries ago, yet Kyoto is still known as a city of tradition.

An Arimatsu shibori artisan learning several stages of production and Nambu ironware becoming a colorful teapot are part of the same story.

If we want tradition to survive, we should change it to suit the times.

Instead, some people reject change because “this is how it has always been done” and simply watch as the artisans disappear.

They become so dedicated to protecting tradition that they drive the tradition itself to extinction.

Even a Kyoto cuisine chef is apparently allowed to change his breakfast to bread, but an artisan’s assigned part of the production process must never change.

Perhaps the division of labor itself should be designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property and carefully preserved until the very end.

When the last artisan is gone, the industry will be able to declare with pride: “We protected the tradition. We can no longer make the product, but we protected it.”