Specs:

• 8oz selvedge plain weave fabric
• plant dyed with gardenia dye
• "hi no maru" rising sun name
• Samurai guarantee ticket
• resin buttons
• made in Japan

Ancient Japanese people believed that plants and trees grow, bloom, and bear fruit because of the power of "nigidama", or the spirit that dwells within them. Based on these ancient customs and deep history of dyeing, we've used dyes extracted from gardenia leaves and berries. Most natural dyes contain a variety of different pigments and are combined with a solution called "mordant" which contains traces of metals and serves not only to fix the color of the dye in the fabric, but also to help express the soft tones of the natural dyes. 

We've created three colors this time: gardenia blue ("usumizu-iro"), gardenia green ("nae-iro"), and gardenia orange ("yamabuki-iro"). The blue is made from gardenia leaves and an aluminum mordant, the green from gardenia berries, aluminum mordant, and a blue gardenia dye, while the orange color is also made from berries and an aluminum mordant. The fabric is an 8oz plain weave selvedge fabric using #10 warp and #20 weft yarns.

Unlike chemical dyes, there may be some unevenness in color shading, but this is because batches of natural dyes cannot be made with the same level of reproducibility as standardized synthetic products. Please see this as one of the interesting features of the product.