How AI could help keep Nishijin-ori, ancient Japanese kimono weaving art, alive

Nishijin-ori, the intricate weaving technique for kimonos that dates back more than 1,000 years in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto, is getting a hi-tech collaborator: artificial intelligence. The colourful weaving style – named after Kyoto’s Nishijin district – has gone through its share of ups and downs, but its survival is more perilous than ever today, as demand for kimonos nosedives among Japanese grappling with modernisation. Hironori Fukuoka, the fourth-generation successor to his Nishijin-ori business, is determined to keep it alive, even if that means turning to AI. “I’ve been pondering how the art of Nishijin-ori can stay relevant to the needs of today,” he said in his shop in Nishijin. Besides the AI project, Fukuoka is also working on using his weaving technique to make durable materials for fishing rods and aircraft. Giant looms clatter at his shop, Fukuoka Weaving. The patterns on the gorgeous fabric, slowly turning out from the loom, are repetitive and geometric, which makes them conducive to translating into digital data. Deciding which hand-dyed colour thread goes where to make the patterns is much like the binary system of a computer. Fukuoka is also exploring how AI might work for Nishijin-ori, with the help of Sony Computer Science Laboratories. AI only makes suggestions for the designs and does not do any of the actual production work. But that does not bother Fukuoka or the researchers. “Our research stems from the idea that human life gets truly enriched only if it has both what’s newly innovated and what never changes,” said Jun Rekimoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo and chief science officer at Sony CSL, which is also studying how AI can be used to document and relay the moves of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. “We don’t believe AI can do everything. Nishijin-ori is a massive, complicated industry, so it starts with figuring out where AI can help out.” What has come of it is a startling but logical turn in thinking, fitting of the art adorning kimonos worn by Japan’s imperial family. The AI was fed various Nishijin-ori patterns that already existed and instructed to come up with its own suggestions. One was a bold pattern of black and orange that seemed to evoke a tropical motif. To Fukuoka, some of the AI’s ideas are interesting but simply off. The difference between AI and human effort is that the former can come up with multiple suggestions in seconds. Fukuoka immediately gravitates towards one that uses a motif of a leaf to define the angular lines of a traditional pattern, something he says a human wouldn’t have thought of. He finds that ingenious. The kimono the AI collaboration has produced is a luscious soft green. It does not have a price tag and is not in production yet. The weaving is carried out by the machine under the guidance of the human artist in the traditional way. Nishijin-ori kimonos sell for as much as 1 million yen (US$6,630). Many Japanese these days do not bother buying a kimono and may rent one for special occasions like weddings. Putting one on is an arduous, complicated affair, often requiring professional help, making kimonos even less accessible. Dr Lana Sinapayen, associate researcher at Sony CSL, believes AI often gets assigned the creative, fun work, leaving tedious tasks to people when it should be the other way around. “That was my goal,” she said in an interview at Fukuoka Weaving. Digital technology cannot automatically represent all the colour gradations of Nishijin-ori. But AI can figure out how to best do it digitally, and it can also learn how the human artist fixes the patterns it has produced. Once that is done, AI can tackle arduous tasks in a matter of seconds, doing a pretty good job, according to the researchers. Artificial intelligence is being used widely in factories, offices, schools and homes because it can do tasks faster and in greater volume, and is usually quite accurate and unbiased compared to human efforts. Its spread has been faster in the US and other Western nations than in Japan, which tends to be cautious about change and prefers carefully made, consensus-based decisions. But the use of AI in arts and crafts is promising, including text-to-image generative AI for the creation of visual images from text prompts, according to a study by Henriikka Vartiainen and Matti Tedre, who looked at the use of AI by craft educators in Finland. “As computers have taken over many routine and boring tasks that were previously performed by people, the computer revolution has also been said to liberate time and offer new opportunities for human imagination and creativity,” they said.

How AI could help keep Nishijin-ori, ancient Japanese kimono weaving art, alive

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}AI is being tested in the design of patterns for kimonos in Kyoto, as the latest technology is combined with the ancient weaving art

AI is being tested in the design of patterns for kimonos in Kyoto, as the latest technology is combined with the ancient weaving art