Boro

What boro means

The word comes from boroboro, which describes something worn thin or repaired. Boro itself names a family of Japanese textiles built out of old cloth, made mostly from cotton, linen and hemp that farming households wove by hand. Worn pieces were stitched or woven back into the whole, layer on layer, until the result was thick enough to keep a person warm and stood up to daily work. Many surviving pieces also carry kasuri, a patterned dyework done in the weave.

Why it developed

For farming families, making cloth at home cost less than buying it. Growing, spinning, dyeing and weaving were all part of the same household work, and so was putting old, worn-out clothing back into use as material for something new. Cotton, the warmer fibre, was harder to come by, so people built warmth by layering. Under the Edo period, silk and fine cotton were kept for a small group at the top, by dress rules or simply by price, and silk did not suit heavy work. Practical clothing therefore grew from what was at hand.

Indigo dyeing

Indigo was the dye that peasant households could most easily obtain. It was cheap to grow, and families often raised and processed it themselves. A single dye bath could be used again and again, which made it thrifty, and cloth steeped in it also resisted moths. Farmers learned that a strong bath faded quickly where a garment rubbed, while repeated dips in a weak bath held colour longer and wore better. This is why so much boro is deep blue, sometimes over kasuri patterns already woven into the cloth.

Preservation and change

After the Meiji period, living standards rose across Japan and most boro was thrown out and replaced with new clothes. For many working-class people the old garments were a painful reminder of poverty, and neither government nor cultural bodies put much effort into keeping them. In time the opposite view took hold: the marks of wear and use came to stand for wabi-sabi. The folklorist Chuzaburo Tanaka gathered more than 20,000 pieces in his lifetime; 786 of them are Important Tangible Cultural Properties, and 1,500 pieces were shown at the Amuse Museum, in Tokyo's Asakusa district.

Saki-ori weaving

Saki-ori is a related Japanese weaving that turns old kimono into new cloth. The kimono are cut into narrow strips, about one centimetre wide, then woven; a single obi could take roughly three old kimono. Vests and other garments were made this way in the past. Saki-ori began as an article of thrift, yet today such obi are costly informal wear. They are woven on one side and often carry ikat patterns of stripes, checks and arrows, usually in indigo.

How Boro is kept

In farming households the work began with the household itself: someone grew the fibre, spun it, dyed it and wove it, then made the garment. When cloth wore through, spare scraps were stitched over the thin places with simple running stitches, and the mended garment went back into use. Years of this left a garment heavy with layers, sometimes carrying the mending of two or three generations. Today the same stitching and layering is practised as a craft, and older pieces are studied, collected and copied by makers.

When and where

Boro has no fixed date in the year. It belongs to the Edo period and to the generations of mending that followed, and it fell out of ordinary use after the Meiji period, as living standards rose and cheap ready-made clothing spread in early twentieth-century Japan.

Boro belongs to rural Japan, where farming households made and repaired their own clothes. Surviving pieces come from those communities, and the largest known group was gathered by the folklorist Chuzaburo Tanaka. His collection is kept in Tokyo: the Amuse Museum in Asakusa holds 1,500 pieces.

What Boro means

For the families who made them, boro garments were ordinary and necessary, and later they became a sore reminder of hard times. Seen differently today, the same cloth stands for wabi-sabi, the Japanese regard for wear, age and use as beautiful. Layers of mending record decades of care, and to many admirers the stitched surface expresses thrift, patience and the refusal to throw things away.

Questions people ask about Boro

See also

IkatA resist-dyeing craft from Southeast Asia, where yarns are tied and dyed before weavingChinese knottingA folk craft of cord tied into lucky shapes, made in China and given as charmsBonsaiA Japanese craft of keeping small trees in shallow pots, shaped for contemplationCeladonGreen-glazed pottery first made in China, valued for colours that echo jade

Good reading and sources

• Boro (textile) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.