Before Dawn
While working overseas,
something began to take shape inside me.
The beauty of Japanese culture.
Its depth.
Its quiet complexity.
Not just because it has a long history,
but because it carries generations of human lives —
people’s hands, habits, and ways of living —
passed down, uninterrupted.
Looking back, I don’t think
I truly treated the country I was born and raised in with deep respect.
It’s not that I had no interest.
It’s not that I lacked pride in Japanese culture.
I simply didn’t feel its pull.
Maybe it was because I was part of it.
Maybe because I was Japanese myself.
I could see the darker sides of my own country all too clearly.
I dreamed of leaving this small island nation
and stepping out into a wider world.
There was a moment that stayed with me.
A foreign friend once said,
“Japanese people don’t really speak well of Japan, do they?”
I was shocked.
That wasn’t my intention at all.
Even if I never said it out loud,
deep down, I believed that Japanese culture was something to be proud of —
something the world could admire.
I had never gone out of my way to tell that to someone who wasn’t Japanese.
Maybe it was a kind of virtue.
Maybe it was just how I had learned to be.
I had always longed to go abroad.
Leaving Japan felt inevitable.
I thought I was interested in Japanese culture.
But not enough passion to spend years learning it,
or to truly face it.
Crossing Borders
After I started my career,
I was finally given the opportunity to relocate to Hong Kong.
For the first time,
I built a life abroad —
not as a visitor, but as a resident.
It was there that I met people in Hong Kong
who truly loved Japan.
People who had traveled Japan more than most Japanese.
People who could speak about Japanese culture with more depth than I could.
“Kimono — I’d love to try wearing one.”
“Yukata are so beautiful.”
Every time I heard this, I brushed it off.
“Oh, Japanese people don’t really wear kimono anymore!
We don’t even know how.”
I spoke almost proudly about what I didn’t know —
about what I couldn’t do.
Looking back, it’s embarrassing.
It took me time to see how embarrassing that was.
What could I say, as a Japanese person, about Japan?
That question stayed with me.
And slowly, I began to look back at my own roots.
An Encounter
“I want at least one thing I can say I truly know about Japanese culture.”
With that simple thought,
I enrolled in a kimono dressing class after returning to Japan.
If I wore kimono to a party overseas, maybe people would admire me.
To be honest, that was my motivation.
It didn’t take long for me to be completely drawn in.
The meanings embedded in each pattern.
The layers of history behind them.
Customs from hundreds of years ago
still breathing quietly within our everyday lives.
We are, without question,
part of a long line of history shaped by those who came before us.
It shook me to my core.
Reality
That moment did not last.
Reality slowly caught up with me.
Traditional culture is disappearing.
The kimono market today is one-ninth the size it was forty years ago.
Production of Kyoto Yuzen has fallen to just 1.4% of what it once was.
Since starting ALISA,
I have already seen many artisans retire.
“This work doesn’t make enough money.”
“I can’t pass this on to my children.”
These are words I hear far too often.
The art and craftsmanship that captured my heart
were fading, day by day, right in front of me.
What Tradition Means
What is tradition?
I wear kimono.
But I don’t wear them every day.
In a life where every minute and second is accounted for,
that simply isn’t realistic.
If even I —
someone so deeply moved by kimono —
cannot wear them daily,
then who will?
Who will buy them,
so that artisans can continue to make a living?
Tradition doesn’t survive simply by being “protected.”
If it does not function as a business,
it cannot continue.
Tradition is not about clinging to the past.
It should be something that grows out of our everyday lives.
Something that exists naturally.
Something anyone can reach for, without hesitation.
This is how tradition moves forward.
The quiet excitement I felt when wearing kimono —
that feeling.
To reshape it into a form that people living today,
anywhere in the world,
can pick up and experience.
That question never left me.
That was the beginning of ALISA.