Mending, connecting, and dancing a prayer.

As someone who makes clothes, I have a "responsibility to produce."

Working as a dress repairer, I travel to learn about the techniques of "mending" passed down across various regions of Japan.

I went to Akita to see the "Hanui" (patchwork) costumes of the Nishimonai Bon Odori. As the name suggests, Hanui costumes are made by reusing family kimonos or sewing together small fabric scraps to create dance attire.

The townspeople happily shared the origins of their respective costumes. They told me how this piece of fabric was from a grandmother's wedding kimono and was tailored into a niece's dance costume, or how a costume was worn by both mother and daughter. Hanui is also a precious family story.

Because they hold family memories, even the smallest scraps are sewn together, backed, and mended. The traces of that handiwork are endearing. The living proof of the wearer and the maker resides there.

The dance is also a "dance of the dead." Dancers wear woven hats so that if the spirits of the departed were to join the circle, no one would know. It is a dance to accept and mourn the dead.

I visited on August 6th, the day of the atomic bombing. Being from Hiroshima, I offered a silent prayer in the station waiting room. No one else was doing the same. Even if it is a special day for me, it is not necessarily so for people in other regions. Even though I pray every year, the world does not become peaceful at all, and the amount of clothing waste does not decrease just because I am mending things. There are times when I wonder if what I am doing has any meaning.

That is why I was happy when a local resident said before the dance, "Today is the day of the atomic bombing, so we will dance while thinking of those who died in the war and offering prayers for peace."

I believe that mending is also a form of mourning and a way to connect to the future. I have a responsibility to produce. When I travel and engage with a region and its people, disasters and wars are no longer someone else's problem. I am not alone, and I am surely not powerless. I want to keep searching for what I can do without falling into despair.