From Kyoto to Boston:

Exploring the History and Cultural Significance of Japanese Kimono

Sunday, February 10, 2019 at 2:00 PM

The Lookout/Kitchen (CIC)

101 Main Street, 15th Floor, Cambrige, MA

Come join the Japan Society of Boston and the New England JETAA to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Boston-Kyoto sister city relationship with an insightful discussion on the Japanese kimono!

Hear the fascinating history of kimono and it's influence on Western Culture and Art from Professor Sarah Frederick of Boston University.  We will also hear a very personal story from Ara Mahar whose experience as a JET in Japan lead her to an intimate journey with kimono that even took her to a kimono competition. 

Did you know that a there are many different kinds of kimono which are worn for specific reasons and occasions?  Do you know the difference between a "furisode" and a "tomesode"?  Learn from Izumi Noguchi, an avid kimono lover who has been educating the Boston community about the kimono for years.

Through this interactive lecture and discussion, guests will not only learn about the history and influence of kimono and be inspired by a personal kimono journey, but also go home with a knowledge of the different kinds of kimono you can be proud of without even setting foot in Japan!

About Sarah Frederick:

Sarah Frederick is an Associate Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature, and the Associate Chair of the Department of World Languages & Literatures and Convener of Japanese at Boston University.  She is also a faculty member in the program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her areas of specialization are in 20th-century Japanese literature and history and relationships among mass media, modern literature, gender, and culture. She has worked extensively on 1920s and 30s women’s print culture, image and text in literature of the 1930s-1950s, and gender and sexuality in modern literature and culture.  She has received a BFRI (Bunka Fashion Research Institute) and MEXT Collaborative Fellowship for research on representations of kimono in literary modernism and the modernist and cosmopolitan aspects of kimono wearing and representation. She was invited to be the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies Professor in 2008-09 and Fall 2015. She is currently writing a book on the popular author Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973) and has translated her 1923 story “Yellow Rose” (Expanded Editions, 2016).

About Ara Mahar

Ara Mahar is a semi-professional kimono dresser living and working in Boston, Massachusetts. They recently returned from working in Japan as an English teacher with the JET Program. While in Japan, they studied kimono dressing with the Sodo Kimono School and came in second place at a national kimono dressing competition. Now, back home in Boston, Ara has turned their attention to spreading the art and beauty of modern kimono to the Western world.

About Izumi Noguchi

Izumi is an avid kimono lover whose passions are to encourage people to wear kimono and to share the beauty and the culture of kimono.  She’s been giving talks on kimono including an introduction to kimono class to Harvard Summer School students and history and patterns of Kosode class to Harvard University students who take advanced Japanese since 2014.  Izumi also hosts a yukata workshop at Davisville junior high school in Rhode Island every year.  She works at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and she goes everywhere in kimono on the weekends. 

This event is being sponsored through a grant received from Sasakawa USA and the U.S. Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme Alumni Association (USJETAA).

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