Tradition meets AI in Nishijinori weaving style from Japan’s ancient capital

Kyoto, Japan – Nishijinori, the complex weaving technique for kimonos which dates back more than a thousand years in the ancient Kyoto Japan capital, obtains a high -tech collaborator: artificial intelligence.

The style of venerated colorful weaving associated with “the history of Genji” of the Heian era of the 12th century, crossed its share of ups and downs. But its survival is more perilous than ever today, because the nose demand from Kimonos dives in the Japanese struggling with modernization.

Hironori Fukuoka, the fourth generation successor to his Nishijinori company, is determined to keep the art of which he inherited, even if it means turning to AI.

“I want to leave to the inheritance what my father left me,” he said in his store, a jerky store in the Nishijin de Kyoto district, a city with temples filled with statues and carved gardens that never seems to change.

“I have been reflecting on how Nishijinori’s art can remain relevant for today’s needs,” said Fukuoka.

In addition to the AI project, Fukuoka is also working on the use of its weaving technique to make super durable materials for fishing rods and planes.

The giant weaving trades slam in its shop, called Fukuoka Weaving. The patterns on the magnificent fabric, which take place slowly of the loom, are repetitive and geometric, which makes it conducive to the translation into digital data. Deciding which hand -dyed color wire goes where to make the patterns is very similar to the current digital signals of a computer.

Such a similarity is what Fukuoka focuses on in exploring how AI could work for Nishijinori, with the help of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, an independent research branch of the Sony Corp electronics and entertainment company.

AI only makes suggestions for conceptions and does not make any real production work. But that doesn’t bother Fukuoka or researchers.

“Our research arises from the idea that human life is only really enriched if it has both what is newly innovated and what never changes,” said Jun Rekimoto, director of sciences at Sony CSL, who also studies how AI can be used to document and relay the movements of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

“We don’t think AI can do anything. Nishijinori is a massive and complicated industry and it therefore starts by determining where AI can help, “said Rekimoto, also a professor at the University of Tokyo.

What came out is a surprising but logical turning point in thought, the adjustment of art that adorns the kimonos worn by the Imperial family of Japan.

The AI was nourished by various models of Nishijinori which already existed and asked to offer its own suggestions. One was a daring pattern of black and orange that seemed to evoke a tropical pattern.

For Fukuoka, some of the ideas of AI are interesting but simply extinct. The difference between AI and human effort is that the first can offer several suggestions in a few seconds.

Fukuoka immediately revolves to the one who uses a pattern of a sheet to define the angular lines of a traditional motif, which he says that a human would not have thought. He finds it ingenious.

The kimono that the collaboration of AI has produced is a gentle succulent green, although it has no price and is not yet in production.

The weaving is carried out by the old -fashioned machine under the direction of the human artist in the traditional way.

Nishijinori Kimonos sells up to a million yen ($ 6,700). Many Japanese today do not bother to buy a kimono and can rent it for special occasions such as weddings, if at all.

Putting one is an arduous and complicated affair, often requiring professional help, which makes kimonos even less accessible.

Dr. Lana Sinapayan, associate researcher at Sony CSL, thinks that AI is often attributed to creative and fun, leaving tedious tasks to people, when it should be the opposite.

“It was my goal,” she said in an interview with Fukuoka Weaving, her intention to use AI in assistant roles, not management positions.

Digital technology cannot automatically represent all Nishijinori colors gradations. But AI can understand how to do the best digitally, and it can also learn how the human artist repairs the models he has produced.

Once this is all done, AI can tackle arduous tasks in a few seconds, doing a very good job, according to the researchers.

Artificial intelligence is widely used in factories, offices, schools and houses, because it can perform tasks faster and in greater volume, and is generally quite precise and impartial, compared to human efforts. Its spread has been faster in the United States and other Western countries than in Japan, which tends to be careful about change and prefers decisions carefully taken by consensus.

But the use of AI in the arts and crafts is promising, such as the text generator of the image text for the creation of visual images from text prompts, according to a study by Henriikka Vartiainen and Matti Tedre, who examined the use of AI by craft educators in Finland.

“While computers have resumed many routine and boring tasks that have already been carried out by people, the computer revolution has also been said to release time and offer new opportunities for human imagination and creativity,” they said.