New Year's Day 2018

This is a very old komon which is likely silk, but the fabric content is unconfirmed. It appears black until it hits the light, in which it is a very deep kelly green! The spots on it resemble koban, a gold coin used until recent history for very wealthy people. A koban is worth one ryo, which in the 1600s Edo period was something like 4,000 brass pieces. 

Wikipedia says that one ryo was one person's amount of rice for one year. But the Portuguese did not want rice as payment, as Japanese samurai and other traders often relied on; they wanted gold (a scarce resource in Japan). So the gold koban was made to equate one ryo when rice was not sufficient or accepted. 

[ By As6673
Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0  
https://bit.ly/39Y12Yt ]

So this kimono is like a new year's wish for wealth and prosperity! It's a cold night so underneath is a deep green turtleneck long-sleeved shirt. The kimono is a bit tight and small. The obi is a metallic-threaded nagoya obi that actually should be worn in Summer but I don't have an adequate one that matches this kimono right now. The rust brown is the closest thing to a pine brown for the season... 

The obiage isn't typically a colour I would choose for this, but it has a woven pattern of eggplants and kumihimo, and eggplant is an auspicious motif for New Year as well. I didn't want to pass it up!

Black boots were worn with this one. Again, it's quite wet-cold out, the kind that seeps into the skin. Also, it means sometimes there is sudden rains, or leftover puddles from other sudden rains. I don't want to get other shoes ruined...

It was a good night to go to the local Japanese restaurant.