Kosode

The kosode was worn in Japan as common, everyday dress from roughly the Kamakura period (1185–1333) until the latter years of the Edo period (1603–1867), at which a point its proportions had diverged to resemble those of modern-day kimono; it was also at this time that the term kimono, meaning "thing to wear on the shoulders", first came into use when referring to the garment formerly known as the kosode.

History

Originating in the Heian period as an undergarment for both men and women, the kosode was a plain white garment, typically made of silk, worn directly next to the skin. Both men and women wore layered, wrap-fronted, wide-sleeved robes on top of the kosode, with the style of layering worn by women of the Imperial Japanese court – known as the jūnihitoe, literally "twelve layers" – featuring a greater number of robes than were seen on men. The kosode would also be worn as sleeping wear alongside a pair of hakama.

Following dress edicts designed to decrease the number of layered garments worn at court, the kosode gradually became outerwear from roughly the Kamakura period onwards. Styles of wearing the kosode – such as layering two kosode and wearing the uppermost robe stripped off from the shoulders – became popular, alongside a number of newly-developed textile decoration techniques, such as dyeing and embroidery, used to decorate the garment.

Initially undyed, the dyed kosode came in the Muromachi period, peaked in popularity in the Momoyama period, and faded out in the Keicho period and Edo period. Methods used for decoration included kara-ori ("Chinese textile") silk fabrics, which mimicked embroidery through the use of floating silk yarns and gilt-paper strips, and the elaborate tsujigahana technique of combination dyework and embroidery, until both were restrained by sumptuary laws and the development of yuzen dyework.

The kosode's proportions – a wide body and comparatively narrow sleeves – gradually evened out over time, before coming to resemble those of a modern kimono around the Edo period. The sleeves on some women's kosode also got longer and began to detach from the body below the shoulder, a style allowing the obi to become wider over time.