A Well-Worn Festival Hanten: Beautiful Design

early to mid twentieth century
25" x 48", 63.5 cm x 122 cm

This is a resist dyed cotton festival hanten which, as can be easily seen, has a high graphic impact due to its bold design and simple color palette.  

It is completely hand stitched and it is well-worn, as the title of this post says. It is faded, its surface is slight abraded, there are some stains (shown in the accompanying photos) and the neck portion of the collar area is worn through.

The jacket's decorative design is based on an oversized grid onto which a kanji or Chinese character is superimposed: the orange colored kanji is in direct contrast to the blue colored ground.  This length of this happi or hanten has been altered from the original: if you look at the detail photographs here you will see that the bottom hem has been drawn up and stitched in order to shorten the coat.

The measurements quoted above show, first, the dimension from shoulder to hem followed by sleeve tip to sleeve tip.

A gorgeous little thing with nice age.