Seven Dips of White Cloth, and the Foam in the Jar

Seven times.

That is how many times a single piece of white hemp cloth was sunk into a jar of ai, indigo, before the day was out.

After each sinking it was drawn up and given to the wind. The more it was layered, the deeper the blue grew, and by the seventh dip it had gone close to black.

An indigo laid on this thickly was called kachi-iro by people of old. Because kachi rings the same as the word for "victory," the samurai were fond of it as an omen of luck — so it has been handed down.

I watched those seven dips from the closest place there was to the jar. I was the one minding it.

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The autumn of 1541 (Tenbun 10). At a rural dye-works, I was minding the jars. I had come on as a day laborer, and ten days had passed.

The first task of the morning was to take the lids off the jars lined up along the earthen floor. You add the lye, and stir slowly with a pole from the bottom up. What lies at the bottom is something like black earth, made of indigo leaves left to ferment and then packed down. Until it wakes in the lye, you tend it by hand every morning. If the lye is too strong, or too weak, the jar turns its face away and will not let its flowers bloom. The master could tell by one thing alone, the lukewarmness at his fingertips.

The lye was made of hearth ash stirred into water and left overnight, and what I drew off was the clear liquid on top. Fetching it was my work too. Each time I put my hands into the cold water, the pads of my fingers split and went tight. On the poles under the eaves hung several lengths of cloth dyed the day before, and each time the wind blew they flapped, bata, bata.

On the surface of the stirred jar, purplish foam rose up in small beads. At the dye-works they called this foam "the flower." If the flowers were blooming well, the jar was in good humor that day. The master's grandson Mankichi, a boy of eight, would lift a lid and read the color of the flowers and tell you the jar's mood, and be right. The grown men did not look at it that way.

In the gaps of his morning chores Mankichi would wet a straw stalk at the rim of a jar and flick it through the air, hyu. A wet stalk is green at first, but as he swung it, it turned blue. That seemed to delight him. The master never scolded the boy for it, and never praised him either. Only, now and then, while the straw was turning blue, he would stop his hands and watch it, quite still.

The master was close to sixty. From the wrists down his hands were a blue that washing would not take out, dyed even under the nails. While he worked he hardly spoke. He put a hand into the jar, measured the liquor's warmth with his fingers, and by a nod or no nod handed me the next task.

Before noon, a youth came to the dye-works with his mother at his side. He was of an age barely past having his forelock shaved, and at his waist was a sword far too fine for him. His mother carried a roll of white hemp cloth and a small sack of rice.

"Master dyer. This boy of mine is to go out to the coming war. Please, I beg you, dye it in the deepest victory color you have. It is to be his undershirt."

The master only looked from the cloth to the youth's face and back.

The youth threw out his chest.

"Make it good and dark. If I wear the victory color against my skin, my fortune in war will open. I will bring back a deed of honor."

His voice was full of spirit. But the hand gripping the hilt of his sword was trembling a little, and I had seen it. It was his first battle.

His mother sat down on the edge of the raised floor and told her son with her eyes to sit as well. To me she gave one rice ball wrapped in a bamboo sheath. It was still faintly warm.

The youth did not sit. With the sword still at his waist, he paced restlessly about the dye-works.

Saying nothing, the master sank the white cloth into the biggest jar with a heavy splash. Mankichi crouched by a pillar and laid one straw cord across his knee.

After a while the master drew the cloth up.

It was green. Not the color of indigo — a dull, yellowish green.

"Ah!" the youth cried out. His mother clapped a hand over her mouth. "Has it gone wrong…?"

My hands had already begun to move. I took the end of the cloth from the master's hands and carried it to the pole under the eaves. Where the folds overlap, the wind does not reach, and the green stays. I opened the folds one by one, spread the cloth so the air could pass through, and hung it.

Mankichi wet a single straw at the rim of the jar and flicked it, hyu, to show them. The green straw, as it swung, turned blue. A child's game. The grown men had only ever seen it as a game.

"There," Mankichi said, toward the guests. "That one will go blue too."

The cloth on the pole, in the wind, lost its green bit by bit. As if drinking in the color of the sky, it changed toward blue, and further toward blue. The youth and his mother watched it with their mouths open.

When the cloth had turned blue, the master sank it again. Drew it up, and I carried it. Gave it to the wind. Mankichi tied a knot in his cord. The cloth was in the jar for only a little while; the time spent waiting in the wind was far longer. With each round the blue went deeper by one turn.

On the third round I made a mistake. The sun was slanting, and in my hurry I hung the cloth with one fold left unopened. When it dried, the blue at that fold was thin, and a pale, whitish streak remained.

Before I could say "Master, I am sorry," the master ran a finger along that streak. He said nothing. He put the cloth straight back into the jar and sank it deep, deeper. When he drew it up the next time, the streak had almost melted into the blue and could no longer be seen.

The light falling across the earthen floor turned the foam on the jar golden. By the fourth dip, the youth had stopped pacing. He stood rooted in front of the pole and would not take his eyes off the cloth.

"How long will it take?" the youth asked me.

"As long as there is daylight."

"That long…" he said, and fell silent. He had likely meant to leave if he were told to leave. But his feet would not move from that spot. The spirited face of earlier was nowhere to be found.

When the fifth cloth was hung on the pole, I spoke to the master.

"Master. This is surely dark enough now."

It was a deep indigo. To my eyes, it was the depth of the victory color. The master did not look at my face; he simply came to fetch the cloth.

Mankichi ran a finger over the knots in the cord on his knee.

"Five," Mankichi said. "The usual victory color stops here."

The master sank the cloth into the jar. The sixth. Drew it up, and I carried it. Gave it to the wind. Mankichi tied his knot.

When he sank it the seventh time, the master's hand stayed in the jar longer than before. Slowly, with the flat of his palm, he pressed the cloth through from one end to the other until the indigo liquor had reached every part. The cloth he drew up was not even green. It was nearly black.

The youth's mother, all that while, kept her fist closed on the mouth of the rice sack.

The seventh cloth, too, went up on the pole.

The day was ending. The earthen floor of the dye-works was so thick with the smell of indigo and lye it was hard to breathe. The cloth on the pole had become a blue close to black. Drops fell from its edge onto the stones of the floor, pota, pota. Apart from that sound, no one in the dye-works spoke.

The mother gently took Mankichi's cord in her hand. She traced the knots one by one with her finger. There were seven. She lowered her head and bit her lip.

The youth looked at that cord and took his hand off the hilt of his sword.

The master said only one thing.

"Come for it tomorrow morning."

The mother took out one shō of rice from her sack and bowed her head. The master accepted only half of it and pushed the rest back into the sack. She started to say something, but the master had already turned his back and begun to close the lids of the jars.

I watched the newly dyed cloth shine blue in the evening sun.

As he went out through the gate of the dye-works, the youth looked back, just once. He gazed for a while at the blue close to black hanging on the pole, and then went after his mother. Mankichi, the cord still in his fist, watched his back go.

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Whether that young man came home safe, I do not know.

But that Mankichi's straw cord had seven knots in it — that I can still say, counting on my fingers.

The indigo hand towel I have with me now gives up a little blue water each time I wash it and hang it to dry. When I spread it out, fully dry, it rustles, kasa. A little stiff, a little coarse.

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