Fandom Snowflake Challenge - Day 5

[lebateleur]

Day 5

Recommend a fannish or creative resource. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I love my historical fiction, especially when it's set in Japan's Heian or Edo periods. I like writing (fan)fic set in those periods too. But I encountered a huge problem when beginning to read/write in those periods. What on earth were people wearing? Sure, I knew what it everything looked like from watching period movies and dramas, but what do you call all those robes? Those hats? Those hairstyles?

Kyoto Costume Museum website to the rescue! The site is in Japanese, so if you read that language, great, you're all set. But even if you don't, it's still an excellent resource if you're willing to put in a bit of effort. The links on the left of the page take you chronologically through each of Japan's major eras, from the Jomon to the early Showa. Each link contains front and back photographs of male and female mannequins wearing attire typical of the period, beneath which are line drawings of the same. The line drawings have numbered arrows pointing to various features of the clothing: hairstyles, robes, belts, armor, footwear, etc. These are listed below, written in kanji and phonetically in hiragana. Conveniently, you can copy the kanji and paste it into your online dictionary of choice. Mine is Jim Breen's, which will give you the romanized term for the clothing and a neat explanation of its major features.

Et voila! You're good to go.

Some other good (Japanese-language) resources on clothing are:
- Hairstyles of the Heian Period from 終活ねっと
- Hairstyles of the Edo Period also from from 終活ねっと
- Clothing of the Heian Period from the Kyoto City homepage


これで以上です。