Term · Japanese culture
Kimono
A robe whose name simply means thing to wear, which was accurate until Western clothes turned up and needed a word of their own.
In Otakana the clue reads: Wrapped robe tied with a wide sash
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Japanese culture
- Letters
- 6 · Easy
The garment wraps rather than fastens. It closes left panel over right, always, because the reverse is how the dead are dressed, and it is held by an obi, a wide sash that does the structural work and takes longer to tie than everything else combined. Straight seams, no tailoring to the body, and a shape that changes with the wearer only through padding and folding.
Details carry information. An unmarried woman wears furisode, with sleeves hanging almost to the floor. Married women wear shorter sleeves. Black with five family crests is the most formal thing in the wardrobe, and the season shows in the pattern, so wearing autumn grasses in spring reads as a mistake to anyone paying attention.
Daily wear ended in the twentieth century, and a full formal outfit now costs a great deal and often needs someone else's hands to put on properly. What remains is ceremonial: weddings, coming of age day in January, graduations, New Year visits. Anime uses the same calendar, which is why characters appear in one for exactly those scenes and then never again.
Spelling KIMONO
KIMONO is six letters that alternate consonant and vowel from start to finish, K, I, M, O, N, O, with two Os in the back half. No long vowels, no doubled letters, nothing dropped in the romanisation. The word arrived in English in the nineteenth century and stayed exactly as it was, so anyone who has seen it written once can spell it.