Yoshihiro Saijo stands in his workshop on Tokyo’s Hachijo Island amid the textile technologies of a bygone age: steaming pots of fragrant dye boiled out of bark and grass, and wooden racks hung with raw silk yarn.
“I’m preserving 600-year-old techniques,” Mr Saijo declares, with all the justified pride of a man who is a vital link in the continuing production of the island’s celebrated Kihachijo hand-woven cloth.
