Far from Japan, in a village in northern Sweden, Shinko Nakano runs Kanoko, an online archive of vintage kimonos. We meet the collector to explore her unexpected treasure trove of silk
There’s a lot of beauty to be found in the north of Sweden: snow-covered mountain tops, vast wilderness and – if you’re lucky – a night sky painted purple by the Northern Lights. A less expected treasure to be found, however, is a vast archive of delicate vintage kimonos: hundreds of silk garments stored, catalogued, and prepared for sale. Some are folded into boxes, others hang along the walls. Many are decades old. A few are older than a century.
This is Kanoko, the online kimono archive run by Shinko Nakano, who moved from Japan to Norrbotten in the early 2000s.
Nakano’s first kimono experience is a fuzzy childhood memory. “The first time I wore a kimono was for Shichi-Go-San,” she says, referring to the traditional Japanese ceremony celebrating children at the ages of three, five and seven. “I don’t remember much about it, but there is a photograph of me wearing a kimono and visiting a shrine with my grandmother.” Her favourite kimono memory comes later, at her wedding, where she wore an iro-uchikake: a formal and highly ornate traditional kimono decorated with woven and dyed patterns, embroidery, and gold or silver leaf. “Most people rent them and I did as well, because purchasing one is extremely expensive,” she says. She met her Swedish husband in Madrid in 1988. They married in 1993 and spent years moving between countries before settling in Sweden. “It sounds like a rather ordinary reason,” Nakano says, “but it was the country my husband grew up in, and a country rich in nature.”