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KIMONO: Fashioning Culture. By Liza Crihfield Dalby. Seattle (Washington), London (UK): University of Washington Press. 2001. xi, 384 pp. (B&W illustrations, B&W photos, coloured illus.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 0-295-98155-5.
Liza Crihfield Dalby's book, Kimono Fashioning Culture, is the first comprehensive English-language study which traces the history of the Japanese kimono and the continuity of its characteristic elements from the dress's origin to the present day. Unlike previous publications, the author offers more than just a historical survey of the kimono as Japan's national dress. Since clothing is considered to be one of Japan's most unique, concrete and traditional cultural manifestations, Dalby has taken up the kimono as away of exploring the inter-relationship between this traditional women's dress and the social, historical, artistic and aesthetic aspects of Japanese culture that it has come to embody throughout history. In pursuit of her aim, to illustrate how the kimono's status in Japanese society has been dependent on social rank, time periods and foreign influences, it is the author's challenge to reconstruct the social and aesthetic meanings attached to the kimono, to reveal how, why and...