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 to share my love of indigo here in 2019. It is now ready to welcome you!

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 earthen walls, you can sometimes see rays of light inside through the walls and it gets so cold in the winter! This house loves having people in it, and the indigo vats love the dyeing room, the bacteria seems very happy here! My indigo 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 when the rice fields become like mirrors and you can see the clouds in them. The light is phenomenal here and the mountain is very giving. Growing and composting indigo is not easy work but it carries me through time and life and sharing my blue with people is the best thing I can think of doing with my life at the moment!