made in Japan
This underkimono was probably made for the celebration of the boys festival annually on May 9th.
This boy's underkimono, nagajuban, is in woven silk patterned by tie dying threads before weaving, kasuri, in blue and white broken trellis design with small scattered patterns. The lower resist stencil printed design is on handspun floss silk, tsumagi.
The design of horses, paulonia and the Japanese characters for horse and desire suggest qualities of loyalty, courage and strength associated with the samurai. The kimono is shown folded left over right, which is wrong as it is the way women wear kimono.
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