Zen: What is natural indigo?
Yoshi: Most people use synthetic indigo these days. We are completely natural. Everything that goes in is natural. It is the same way they originally used to do it. We don’t blame people for using synthetic. It is impossible to mass-produce with the technique we use. It’s very time consuming. But the process is where the beauty is.

At what pace do you create your own products?
Yoshi: Currently, we try to make goods whenever we have the time. We are asked by many companies to dye their items. Whenever we make items, we just sell them right away. Since we can’t produce quantity, it doesn’t go very far. And our items need to be taken care of right, so the stores we deal with need to know and love what we do. For shops close to us, we might go check on our products and and re-dye it if we feel it doesn’t look right anymore. We need to teach the customers what Ai-Zome is, so that it doesn’t die out. I feel we might be in the position to pass this art on to the younger generation. So we try to create items that can be felt and used by all sorts of people.

Do they use Ai-Zome in other countries?
Yoshi: Yes, they do it all over the world. It’s the first way of dyeing things. I think different cultures use different things to set it off. We use Japanese sake and fusuma. It was not an uncommon thing back in the day where grandmas would be dying things in their backyard using a bucket. It’s just not common anymore.

Where did you learn the Ai-Zome process?
Yuji: There was a place in Tokyo in the mountain of Ome that I first went and learned. I got into it through liking clothes. I was into vintage items and whatnot. I think it’s been like 12 or 13 years. It was the only place that would take me in and teach me. I first saw some old farmers wearing goods made from natural indigo and fell in love with it. I bought like a home indigo dyeing kit and started fooling around. When I started studying into it more, I found the places that still did the old natural indigo dyeing.

How was the learning process?
Yuji: It was a lot of work. We would start at 7AM and work all day dyeing stuff. But it wasn’t anything crazy. The person I learned from was young and his family had been in the business for a long time.

Where is the indigo that you guys use grown?
Yoshi: We use indigo from Hyogo. A guy was growing it in Tokushima and went back to his hometown and started his own farm. Yuji and I went to Hyogo and checked out the farm and have been working with him ever since. He said there used to be lots of indigo where he was from, but not anymore, so he wanted to start growing it in his hometown again. We also go to Miyazaki during harvest season to help a farm there. And we mix the two different indigos to get our own concoction.

How do you determine what indigo is good?
Yoshi: All the plants contain different types and shades of indigo so it is more of a preference as to which ones you want to use. The only way to measure a plant is how much blue the plant has, but that matters on preference too. And the fact that it is actually never the same color is what draws myself and some other people to it. I feel
like it is rooted in us as Japanese, to be fond of this color blue. It used to cover the towns of Japan. It was called “Japan Blue.”

Can you give me a simple rundown of the process?
Yoshi: First it starts off at the indigo farm where they harvest the plants and separate the leaves and stems. They need to ferment the leaves so they keep the leaves in water for three months, adding more water each week. They make it into an oil or ball and we buy that from them. Lots of boiling goes down, adding all sorts of stuff to get the alkaline level straight using things like wood chips and Japanese sake. We go through six stages of boiling then we usually need to wait for 10 days for the indigo to settle. The process is long and each batch is different. One batch lasts about two months. So we always try to keep our indigo in a cycle.

How do you try to improve what you do?
Yuji: I’m not sure how to improve, but every day is different. Each batch of indigo is different. Every item that we dye is different and everything is constantly changing so we need to stay on top of it. The indigo is alive, it constantly changes so we need to work with the indigo, not just use it.

What is the best quality of Japanese natural indigo?
Yuji: I think it’s the color that we create, it’s “Japan Blue” and no one else can replicate our quality and process.


リトマス
リトマスはユージとヨシの2人の染師による藍色の染色工房/ブランドだ。彼らは日本古来の製法で藍色の染色をしている。彼らの藍染めは藍の葉を数ヶ月かけて発酵させエキスを抽出した”すくも”（染色に使う液体）を使い、染めた物に命を与えるかの様に全ての物を美しいな日本の藍色に変える。今となってはこの時間の掛かる染色法を行う染師は少ない。彼らは伝統的な藍色の染色を守る若い世代のアーティストだ。