niime 百科

Encyclopedia of niime

Ryuta Fujimoto and Mana Ishizuka. Both work as staff members at tamaki niime, and both also share their lives as partners raising children together. This is their first conversation in five years.

The discussion took place on October 21, the day of the new moon, at the Niime Village community hall, known as ‘Niime Residence’. It was a gathering that included participants and the company president, Tamaki. Looking back on nearly ten years they have spent together, their conversation unfolded as a warm and intimate exchange, grounded in a deep understanding of tamaki niime as a singular, one-of-a-kind brand, and centred on the everyday realities of both work and life.

⸻ Starting with the early days at the company.

Ishizuka: I joined tamaki niime as a new graduate in April 2015, after interning here while I was a student. Back then, the organisation was much more compact than it is now. We basically did everything together—not just weaving, but washing, tagging the shawls, all of it. So I was constantly moving, working with my whole body. I was completely absorbed.

Fujimoto: I joined in 2016. At first, I spent about a year doing the ‘washing’ process—basically laundry. Then I joined the weaving team. Since then, rather than specialising in just one thing, my role has shifted depending on what was needed at the time.

— At that point, including Mr.Chaya, the weaving team was just three people.

Fujimoto: Before I joined, Ishizuka and Mr.Chaya were running it with just the two of them.

— Fujimoto felt that Ishizuka was taking on too much work and suggested dividing tasks more evenly. That’s where their disagreements—and battles—began.

Fujimoto: I could see she was carrying a huge workload. It’s easy to say things out loud, but whether you actually have the skills is another matter, so my words didn’t really carry weight. Looking back, I think I was saying things with good intentions, but they probably came across as more trouble than help. Still, I was searching for something—anything—I could do.

— So the theories Fujimoto had learned at his previous job at an apparel trading company didn’t always apply at tamaki niime.

Fujimoto: This company was full of ways of doing things that I’d never experienced before. I still remember how shocking that felt. I came here with certain experiences under my belt, but I learned through working that there were parts where those experiences just didn’t work.

— Your assumptions were overturned.

Fujimoto: Above all, it was the ‘live feeling.’ The speed of deciding, ‘This is what we feel right now, let’s do it,’ is something you can’t replicate elsewhere. The first year or two was about aligning myself with that rhythm. She had already internalised that way of working through experience, so unless I moved closer to that approach, problem-solving was difficult. That unique sense really stood out to me.

— Ms.Ishizuka, how did you feel at the time?

Ishizuka: Well… I didn’t really have time to think about any of that (laughs).

— More like acting before thinking.

Ishizuka: We’d just list what we needed for the live events, or what we wanted to propose, day by day. We wanted to wash what we’d woven and have it in the shop the very next day. There wasn’t even an online shop yet, so we really valued that ‘live feeling.’

— So the keyword is “live feeling.

Ishizuka: And then someone would suggest a typical apparel trading company approach, and I’d think, ‘That’s not what we need right now! ‘(laughs). Aligning those perspectives was hard, and that’s where the clashes started.

Fujimoto: I don’t think that was a bad thing. If we hadn’t clearly voiced our opinions, we wouldn’t have been able to adjust. It was necessary.

Ishizuka: Yeah. Learning different ways of thinking was important. In the end, it was good stimulation, and looking back now, I think it was a positive experience—though at the time I didn’t appreciate him deciding priorities on his own (laughs).

— Through those battles, you came to understand each other better (laughs).

Ishizuka: Back then, I couldn’t really have discussions like ‘What do you think about this?’ with anyone except the president. So for me, working with Fujimoto made it much easier to deepen the creative process among staff. Whenever I said something, he’d respond—not just with ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ but with ideas that led to the next step.

— Eventually, the two of you became partners in your private lives as well. For the story of how that happened, readers can refer to the November 2018 back issue of the Encyclopedia of niime. But rereading your September 2020 conversation, what stood out was how seamlessly you move between private and work topics—talking about your child while they’re awake, and naturally shifting to tamaki niime once they’re asleep.

Fujimoto: That hasn’t changed.

Ishizuka: Not at all. Even earlier today—we were talking about tamaki niime in the middle of our child’s sports day (laughs).

— I guess that feels completely natural to you.

Ishizuka: It’s just everyday life. We don’t try to separate it. It’s deeply embedded in who we are.

Fujimoto: It feels like work and life have always been intertwined.

— Raising children is a major theme. How was it returning to work after maternity leave?

Ishizuka: tamaki niime changes constantly, every single day. It’s such a dynamic company that after a year away, there was an overwhelming amount of information I needed to catch up on. On top of that, COVID had happened, the online shop had launched, and the environment had completely changed. There were many more staff, and I really felt on-site that our circle of collaborators had grown.

— Overcoming the crisis of COVID together must have been significant for the company.

Ishizuka: The atmosphere was totally different back then. I’d come into work and see the president sewing at a machine first thing in the morning—making masks at the entrance.

— That would definitely stir something in you.

Ishizuka: Yes. We usually work through division of labour and teams, which is one of our strengths. But that moment—everyone coming together as one—was truly irreplaceable.

— Having worked in many roles during the early days of shop&lab, how did you feel about acting as a “connector” between teams?

Ishizuka: When one team gets completely absorbed in their task, they can lose sight of things—like inventory becoming unbalanced. I’d try to speak up and point that out. Everyone was working so hard that they couldn’t see what was happening next door. Sometimes, just stepping back a little would reveal ways to share the workload better. When people are desperate, it’s hard to ask for help. I realised how important it is to call out to one another when someone is struggling.

Fujimoto: This company can’t create good things unless everything is connected. Even though each process exists, unless we’re all linked together, it won’t become a good piece.

Ishizuka: You can’t make good fabric without good colour, and without shaping the fabric well, you can’t make good work. That sense of interconnection is crucial.

⸻ That sounds wonderful.

Ishizuka: I’ve been here since I graduated, so I don’t really know other production systems. In many cases—especially in the Banshu ori world—you don’t know who wove the fabric. But here, we feel it right next to us in real time. Just seeing the colour of a piece brings the creator’s face to mind. I feel like we’re constantly passing the baton of intention.

— I see. Now, I would like to ask Mr Fujimoto. You eventually took on public relations work while remaining part of the weaving team.

Fujimoto: That started in my second year. There was an internal project where each staff member had to give a short presentation. After mine, I was called in and told, ‘Do PR.’ (Ishizuka laughs.) Fujimoto: At that point, I didn’t fully understand the company or its history. I only knew my own area. But I wanted to be involved in making things, so I started wondering what I could do through PR. That was around 2018, when I was first interviewed.

— My impression at the time was that you were someone who could objectively reflect on your position.

Ishizuka: Yeah, he really can.

Fujimoto: I wanted to create things, and I was placed on the weaving team. There are design-oriented and craft-oriented approaches, and ideally, you’d do both—but I realised I wasn’t a superhero. When PR entered the picture, I felt doing everything at 100% would be impossible. So I kept asking myself: What is it that only I can do here? What should I bring to this company? That’s something I’m still thinking about.

― I see.

Fujimoto: So the idea of what the ‘goal’ is keeps changing inside me, too. I feel like I have to keep rethinking my objectives at each stage and adjusting them as I go. If something is being asked of me, I think I need to meet that expectation, and I’ve always felt that I have to keep searching for the balance between what I personally want to do and what the company is asking of me. It’s not like I can just do whatever I want on my own, so I’m constantly thinking about where I should be aiming.

Ishizuka: Mm-hmm.

― That sounds very much like tamaki niime’s unique philosophy. Ishizuka once said in a previous interview: ‘Basically, no one tells you no. They say, “Try it.” So you end up doing all kinds of things (laughs). Possibilities aren’t stopped, and that’s why it’s so rewarding.’

Ishizuka: You don’t know until you try—that childlike curiosity is something the presidentnever shuts down.

― Indeed.

Ishizuka: From the perspective of the people who make things, we have staff who used to draw, people who have been creating things in one way or another, people who made clothes… a really wide range. Of course, we also have people who came from completely different fields. For someone who’s never done it before, weaving fabric or turning a piece into a finished form is something you simply can’t fully imagine—you really have to try it for it to sink in. At tamaki niime, you can’t move on to the next step unless you truly understand, for yourself, this is why we create fabric like this, or this is why we give it this form. The president will always say, ‘Why don’t you try it?’ But that always comes with the question, ‘So what will you do next?’ As individual staff members and as a team, we talk things through together and create something as one—that’s the kind of feeling we have. And we’re still challenging ourselves.

⸻ That’s wonderful. You could even call you a storyteller of the ‘niime spirit.’

Tamaki: I’d love for you to keep telling it.

— tamaki niime has changed dramatically again in the past five years.

Ishizuka: Dramatically (laughs).

― There are more animals now, too. And during that time, there were maternity leaves as well.

Ishizuka: I also gave birth to our third child during that time.

― I’d like to hear about how the two of you have changed over these five years.

Fujimoto: For me, five years ago was a turning point. The COVID period was when I grew the most in these eight years. I was juggling a lot of roles and had completely lost sight of where I stood, and then COVID hit, and it felt like everything was reset. At that point, as part of PR, I put out a press release for tamaki niime’s one-of-a-kind masks, the ‘Tamask.’ It really caught the attention of the media, and suddenly, interview requests increased all at once. I remember feeling like I handled an incredible number of interviews. Up until then, I’d had this vague frustration of, ‘What even is PR, anyway?’

― I see.

Fujimoto: I started to see things like, ‘When I talk about it this way, the article becomes much bigger,’ or ‘When I convey this kind of message, people really take interest.’ It was a time when I could experiment a lot and absorb so much all at once. And I often think, if that hadn’t happened, would I really have been able to feel confident in my eighth year here? I was supported by so many people—both inside and outside the company—and, through that, I felt deeply connected, truly challenged, and strengthened. It was an incredibly tough period, but I grew a lot, and because of that experience, I feel like I’m still able to move forward with all kinds of projects now.

― So that difficult time became nourishment for growth.

Fujimoto: In the end, I still don’t quite feel like I can call myself ‘PR.’ Or rather, I feel that I now have a sense of my own value in engaging with the company and communicating tamaki niime in many different forms. Of course, the role of PR is still in my mind, but I believe there’s more I can do, and I don’t really want to be limited by that single label.

― Listening to you, Mr.Fujimoto, it feels like these years have been about establishing the position of Ryuta Fujimoto, rather than just a title like PR. Ms.Ishizuka, I’d like you to look back on these five years of working while on maternity and childcare leave.

Ishizuka: Our oldest child is six now… I think it must have been hard for the president back then, too. With so few people, having someone take time off was difficult, but she was genuinely happy about the birth of a new life. It was the first time staff members had married within the company, and also the first time someone had taken proper maternity and childcare leave. At first, I was really anxious. I kept wondering who I could possibly hand my work over to. In the end, I went into childbirth without really being able to pass everything on. And then, after that, I had two more children. Having an environment where you can think, ‘I want to have children,’ and where you can continue working even after giving birth—that was incredibly important.

― In that sense as well, this environment really…

Ishizuka: What I imagined at first was that once you got married or had children, you probably couldn’t keep working. But the president is very understanding, and I’m so happy that I can properly do the work I’m able to do. Compared to the past, what’s different now is that there are so many more staff members I can entrust things to, and I’m really happy about how much we can share. Things I used to struggle with alone, worrying endlessly by myself, I can now talk about, delegate, and get help with. And if someone else is having a hard time, I can step in for them. Being able to work together with everyone like that makes me truly happy. I think that’s why I was able to give birth with peace of mind. You can’t be blessed with children just because you want them, so I really feel that this environment has given me a life where both children and work can coexist.

― I see….

Ishizuka: There were periods when I stepped away from tamaki niime and from the shop floor, but because the staff working there were always close by, I spent that time hearing about how things were going at the company and listening to their concerns. So I never felt separated from tamaki niime at all. That sense of connection became what brought me back again. If we all help each other, there’s really nothing that’s physically impossible. I truly feel how interesting that is, working like this now.

(To be continued in Part 2)

Original Japanese text by Seiji Koshikawa.
English translation by Adam & Michiko Whipple.