BERKELEY — Sometimes tradition is just not enough.
Or so Koji Wada has learned. Wada, the owner of Kasuri Dyeworks in downtown Berkeley, is spending this week closing his shop, unrolling, rerolling and packing the bolts of ornate fabrics that have been his business for more than 30 years.
The soft plumes of silk suspended in Wada's shop are used to make kimonos, the traditional dress of Japanese men and women. Decades ago, Japanese men began abandoning kimonos for Western dress. And in the last couple of decades, Japanese women have too. Now many rent kimonos only for special occasions, and the market has shrunk for the craftsmen who weave the intricate, hand-dyed cloth they are made of.
Fewer craftsmen are taking up the tradition, making the price for the naturally reversible textiles skyrocket. Moreover, the mass market for machine-printed textiles has overcome the painstaking tradition of hand-dyed fabric.
"These are dead, as of two years ago," said Wada, 58, lifting a roll of burgundy-colored jacquard-patterned silk from the Tango region of Japan. "The craftsmen are all doing something else -- selling cars or insurance or something."
Wada says the demise of his business is due to supply, not demand. Although his customer base has increased, the number of weavers supplying Wada's shop has dropped from about 350 to 40.
Over the years, Wada had to court the remaining weavers. Whenever he met a new craftsman on his thrice-yearly visits to Japan, Wada endured two-hour-long conversations full of platitudes and palaver, a delicate dance of dropping hints about the fabrics he admired and waiting for the craftsman to offer a price. Directly asking a price would make Wada appear cheap and uncouth.
"It was excruciating sometimes. That's why I started smoking again," Wada said, only half joking.
Wada always bought the highest-quality fabric the purveyor showed. When he returned to that supplier the following year, Wada's name was on the company docket, not just as a buyer, but as a buyer of taste. Year by year, the quality of the fabrics he was shown improved.
When he returned to his 15-by-60-foot shop in Berkeley, he educated the quilters, artists, interior decorators and collectors who are his main customers about the skills employed in the pricey fabrics.
