Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/278

 the Japanese have produced a dozen kinds, each wrinkled, cockled, waved, and crinkled in different ways. The great Joshu district produces not as many kinds of crape as Kioto, and Nishijin’s looms are busier each year, weaving crapes as light and thin as gauze, or as heavy and soft as velvet; some costing only thirty or forty cents a yard, and others two and three dollars for an arm’s length. The soft, thick, heavily-ribbed kabe habuiai,

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KABE HABUTAI

once kept for ceremonial gowns and the favorite gifts of the great, is most expensive, having heavier threads and larger cockles than other crapes, and never showing crease or wrinkle. Plain crape, or chirimen, differs as the fineness of thread and the closeness of weaving add to its weight. Ebisu chirimen might be called repousée, from the scale-like convexities of its surface, and is a most fascinating fabric. Finest and most exquisite of all 262