Textiles of Ryukyu Kingdom

For ninety years the Japan Folk Crafts Museum has known that its finest Okinawan cloth came through Ryoichi Mizutani, and not which pieces were which. Mizutani, a collaborator in the Mingei movement, bought them on Sōetsu Yanagi's recommendation from Goeku Chosho, fifteenth head of a branch house of the Shō clan that ruled the Ryukyu Kingdom until its independence ended in 1879. This show identifies them. Roughly fifty bingata and woven works, hung with other objects tied to the Shō family, opening August 22 and running to November 3 for the museum's ninetieth anniversary. A prince's wardrobe, cataloged at last, in a building that holds seventeen thousand things and explains almost none of them on the wall.