indigo farming and dyeing in Okayama, Japan

ainisomatte is the name of my indigo studio. It’s located in Okayama Prefecture, in a small town called Misakicho. Here, I plant indigo seeds in the spring, harvest the leaves in the summer, compost them to make sukumo. My dyeing is done in fermentation vats using my handmade indigo.

I started this practice in 2016 and though my field has moved many times across prefectures, I started building a studio for people to study with me, in 2019. Unfortunately, visitors have not been able to travel to Japan but I hope that some pictures or words that I post can make someone feel like they have travelled a little bit.

The nature here is quite big. My studio is on top of a hill, where we feel close to the stars and we feel the wind. The studio is in an old Japanese house (probably 120 years old) that has bamboo and dirt walls, is not insulated at all and used to be a liquor store. My field used to be a rice field, which there are quite many of around here, which makes the landscape quite beautiful, especially before planting the rice in June and right before harvest in September.