Bingata: The Royal Dyed Textiles of Okinawa

Bingata, Okinawa's stencil-dyed textile: its Ryukyu Kingdom origins, the colour and pattern rules of the royal court, how it is made and its postwar revival.

A Silverfox Studios Perspective ON

October 19, 2026

· 5 min read

^{THE STENCIL-DYED CLOTH OF THE RYUKYU COURT, WHERE COLOUR AND PATTERN SIZE SIGNALLED RANK}

Nineteenth-century Ryukyu robe with colourful dyed motifs — A robe from Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands, nineteenth century, in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons

Bingata is the stencil-dyeing tradition of Okinawa, the former Ryukyu Kingdom. Patterns are cut into paper stencils, a rice paste is spread over them onto the cloth to resist the dye, and the open areas are painted by hand with pigments and dyes, so that a single piece can carry between 9 and 18 colours. The Japan Traditional Crafts association dates the craft's origins to the mid-fifteenth century and records that it was produced under the protection of the Ryukyu royal government. Because its pigments were costly and partly imported from China, bingata garments were restricted to the royal family and the samurai class, and colour and pattern size indicated a wearer's rank. The craft was badly damaged in the Second World War, revived by dyers in the postwar years, and designated a Traditional Craft of Japan on 31 May 1984 under the name Ryukyu Bingata.

^{WHAT IS BINGATA}

Bingata fabric fragment with cherry blossoms, waves and mountain motifs — A nineteenth-century bingata textile fragment with cherry blossoms, waves and mountains. Image: Google Art Project (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

Bingata combines stencil dyeing with hand colouring. According to the Japan Traditional Crafts association, the base cloth may be silk, linen, banana fibre or cotton; the ground is dyed, and the patterns are coloured with pigments. Its basic colours are red, yellow, blue, green and purple. Nine pigments are mixed to create the palette, and one piece uses between 9 and 18 colours. There are two colour schemes: the multicoloured style known as bingata, and aigata, which uses Ryukyu indigo alone. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which holds a group of nineteenth-century bingata robes and lengths from Shuri, describes the technique as stencil resist with bright mineral pigments.

The traditional palette came from both local and imported sources. The Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau records that bingata used natural dyes such as Ryukyu indigo and dye from the fukugi tree, together with costly pigments imported from China. Bingata was used for kimono and for ryuso, the traditional dress of the Ryukyuan people. Today the craft is centred on the cities of Naha, Ginowan, Urasoe, Itoman and Tomigusuku in Okinawa Prefecture, and its products include kimono fabric, obi sashes, decorative cloths, furoshiki wrapping cloths and bags.

^{THE RYUKYU KINGDOM AND THE ORIGINS OF BINGATA}

The Ryukyu Kingdom was an independent state until 1879, when the islands became part of Japan, as the V&A notes in its catalogue records. UNESCO, which inscribed the Gusuku Sites and Related Properties of the Kingdom of Ryukyu on the World Heritage List in 2000, describes the islands as a centre of economic and cultural interchange between Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan for several centuries. That trade shaped the kingdom's textiles. The Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau writes that trade with China and other East Asian countries during the kingdom period brought new techniques and materials, which blended with each island's environment and culture, and that bingata in particular is rooted in older Ryukyu dyeing culture while borrowing techniques from neighbouring countries.

Bingata was also a trade good in its own right. The Japan Traditional Crafts association notes that early nineteenth-century records describe it as Oriental floral cloth and as a well-known item in the market of the Chinese province of Fujian. The kingdom's other textiles also served the court and its trade: outlying islands produced high-quality cloth as tribute to the royal government and for use as gifts and in trade. Okinawa Prefecture still has 16 crafts designated as national traditional crafts, and 13 of them are textiles.

^{BINGATA AT THE RYUKYU COURT: COLOUR, PATTERN AND RANK}

Red lacquered main hall of Shuri Castle in Naha, Okinawa — The former main hall (seiden) of Shuri Castle in Naha, Okinawa, photographed in 2013. Image: Alexander Synaptic (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Who wore bingata was regulated. The Japan Traditional Crafts association states that it was originally formal attire for women of the royal and samurai classes. The Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau describes the rules in more detail: nobles wore larger patterns and samurai smaller ones, yellow was the highest-ranking colour, and other colours were assigned according to rank, age and gender. The V&A's records for its Shuri robes state that robes of this kind were worn only by members of the Ryukyuan royal family.

Production was organised around the court. During the kingdom period, three dyeing families, the Chinen, Shiroma and Takushi, served the samurai class and competed with one another in craftsmanship, according to the visitors bureau. The royal government also guided design across the kingdom's textiles by sending craftsmen a miezu, a design chart showing approved colours and patterns, a practice that helped shape the region's textile traditions. The family lines continue: Toma Chinen, who designs and cuts his own stencils, is the tenth generation of the Shimogiho Chinen family, and Sadao Chinen founded the Chinen Bingata Laboratory in Naha.

^{HOW BINGATA IS MADE}

Historic photograph of bingata dyers at work in Okinawa — Bingata dyeing in Okinawa, photographed before the Second World War. Image: Pre-war photographer (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

The process begins with the stencil. The Japan Traditional Crafts association describes how the design is attached to a base of handmade Japanese paper treated with persimmon tannin and carved by tsukibori, or thrust carving, which allows smooth curved lines. The visitors bureau notes that dried tofu is used as the underlay for carving. The stencil is then laid on the cloth and a resist paste is spread over it with a spatula. The paste is made from glutinous rice and rice bran with water, and the visitors bureau adds salt to the recipe. For larger items such as furoshiki, dyers instead squeeze paste freehand from a cotton tube, a method called tsutsubiki.

Colour is applied next. Pigments are mixed with gojiru, a soybean liquid that helps them adhere, and brushed on in order from warm to cool colours. The colour is then brushed on a second time and rubbed into the cloth with a short brush made from a woman's hair, which fixes it and softens the edges. Shading called kumadori follows: darker tones are worked in circular strokes along the edges of petals and the veins of leaves to give a blurred gradient. After the cloth is steamed to fix the colours, paste is laid over the finished patterns, the background is dyed, either in an indigo vat or with a wide brush, and the cloth is steamed for about an hour, rinsed to remove excess dye and paste, and dried.

^{BINGATA MOTIFS IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS}

Ryukyu bingata garment patterned with bamboo, plum blossom and cranes — A cotton garment with bamboo, plum and crane, stencil-dyed in bingata on Okinawa Main Island during the Second Sho dynasty, nineteenth century, Tokyo National Museum. Image: Daderot (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons

The visitors bureau lists vivid florals and images of fish, water and other Okinawan nature among bingata's typical designs. The V&A's nineteenth-century pieces from Shuri show the range. One robe, made between 1800 and 1870, has a blue cotton ground patterned with maple leaves outlined in white, some with pink or mauve centres, on fine black branches. The museum notes that bingata normally uses one stencil, but this robe used two, one for the leaves and one for the branches, and that the calligraphic style of the branches is unusual for bingata and shows the skill of the stencil cutter and dyer.

Other pieces in the same collection show further subjects. A robe of the same period is dyed with cranes, pine trees, clouds and chrysanthemums. A child's kimono made between 1870 and 1900 has birds, geese and bamboo beside a stream on blue bast fibre, and a length of cotton from 1800 to 1870 carries a small lattice in black on mauve, with spots of red, yellow and blue. Contemporary work continues the floral repertoire: the Japan Traditional Crafts association illustrates a furisode, a long-sleeved kimono, patterned with trumpet lilies and bougainvillea.

^{WAR, REVIVAL AND RECOGNITION}

Bingata was badly damaged during the Second World War, as was Shuri Castle: UNESCO notes that the castle's main hall was destroyed by a wartime fire and later rebuilt from surveys, photographs and excavation. The visitors bureau credits the dyers Eiki Shiroma and Sekko Chinen with leading the craft's revival, and the Japan Traditional Crafts association records that the Bingata Preservation Society and the Okinawa Bingata Traditional Techniques Preservation Society were formed after the war. Ryukyu Bingata was designated a Traditional Craft on 31 May 1984, and in 2019 the Ryukyu Bingata Preservation and Expansion Consortium was established to preserve, promote and license the craft.

Bingata also influenced twentieth-century Japanese design. According to the V&A, the textile artist Serizawa Keisuke (1895 to 1984) saw a group of Okinawan wrapping cloths at an exhibition in Tokyo in 1928, an encounter that led him to become a textile artist. He learned the bingata process in the late 1920s but did not travel to Okinawa until 1939, and bingata's colours and bold designs shaped his work from the start. The V&A holds a six-fold screen he made around 1938, stencil-resist dyed on silk with scenes of traditional paper-making, which the museum associates with the Japanese Folk Craft Movement. A second screen, made around 1940 in the bingata technique, shows a map of Okinawa's main island surrounded by scenes of farming, weaving and pottery-making, bolts of bingata cloth and three dancers in bingata kimono. The V&A describes Serizawa as a leading figure in the Mingei, or folk craft, movement.

^{HENSHIN AND BINGATA IN JAKARTA}

Henshin at The Westin Jakarta, designed by Silverfox Studios — Henshin at The Westin Jakarta, Indonesia

Henshin is a Japanese-Peruvian (Nikkei) restaurant and rooftop bar on floors 67 to 69 of The Westin Jakarta. It opened in 2017, and Silverfox Studios designed all three floors and the arrival tunnel. Henshin means transformation in Japanese, and the kitchen is led by Chef Hajime Kasuga, a third-generation Japanese Peruvian. Okinawan bingata cloth is one of the design references: a large bingata pattern covers the ceiling of level 69. A display of translucent, blue-lit sake barrel forms is another.