Excited about my latest vintage silk bag finds, I was busy preparing them for the collection photo shoot when one in particular really caught my attention. This fabulous silk clutch with a crane and cherry blossom.
It felt fatter than the others.
There was definitely something inside it.
At first, it looked like nothing more exciting than a wodge of white paper, presumably tucked inside to help the bag keep its shape. I had already found old newspaper used for the same purpose in another vintage bag, though, so I took a closer look.
I began to unwrap it.
Beneath the outer paper was a softer layer of white tissue, and through that I could just make out printed lettering.
There was an old Japanese newspaper inside this bag too. Only this one had a photograph on it. I could see a baby, a crowd of young people and what looked like a celebration.
Who were they, and what were they celebrating? I had to find out.
'Shōwa 46'
The date was the first clue I managed to decipher: Shōwa 46, 16 January 1971.
Japanese dates may be written according to the era of the reigning emperor. Shōwa 46 means the forty-sixth year of the Shōwa era and corresponds to 1971 in the Western calendar.
Shōwa 46, 16 January 1971.
You can read more about Japanese eras in the Kimono Living guide.
The newspaper was so crumpled that very little else was legible. I carefully flattened it, gave it a cautious press, and the story slowly began to reveal itself.
Talk about a time capsule.
The newspaper as I found it, creased into the shape of the bag after years hidden inside.
'Mum and Dad at Twenty'
The newspaper is the evening edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Its name appears across the top as 夕刊讀賣新聞, using the older forms 讀賣 for the modern 読売.
The masthead identifies the paper as the evening edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun.
The headline roughly translates as "Mum and Dad at Twenty". It is part of a newspaper series called “1971: A Record of People”.
The story follows Toshiharu and Reiko Kadomatsu, a young couple from Kishiwada in Ōsaka Prefecture. Toshiharu was born on 14 March 1950 and Reiko on 7 June of the same year. Both were twenty years old and already married, with a baby son named Yoshiyuki.
On the morning of Coming-of-Age Day, the newspaper finds the couple in their small apartment, holding Yoshiyuki and singing Kawachi Ondo at the tops of their voices.
They had been invited to their local coming-of-age ceremony on 15 January. Among approximately 2,300 young adults invited, the article described them as the only married couple who already had a child. The photograph shows them on the roof of the Ōsaka Prefectural Government building, surrounded by other young people who had also reached adulthood, with Ōsaka Castle in the background.
Coming-of-Age Day in Ōsaka, 1971, with Ōsaka Castle visible behind the group.
Toshiharu and Reiko had met when they were eighteen. He was working as a conductor on a Nankai Electric Railway bus, while she travelled to a television factory in Sakai. The bus became their meeting place. At first, their courtship consisted largely of exchanging glances during her journey to work.
Things escalated fast. Toshiharu went to Reiko’s family home to ask for her hand. Her parents strongly opposed the match, but he tried to persuade them with the practical arithmetic of their future life together: his monthly pay was 40,000 yen and, with Reiko’s earnings, their combined income would be 63,000 yen.
They married in February 1969.
At their wedding reception, still in their wedding clothes and holding hands, they sang Kawachi Ondo, the lively folk music of Ōsaka’s Kawachi region. The newspaper describes it as their song.
Yoshiyuki was born in March 1970. From that point, the article says, the two became a ferociously hardworking couple. Toshiharu’s punishing hours on the buses, reportedly from five in the morning until eleven at night, eventually damaged his health and led him to leave the bus company for work as a lorry driver.
Reiko left her factory job. Her days became a repetition of cooking, washing and cleaning while she cared for their baby.
Yet the tone is proud and hopeful. Their home was a single rented room measuring six tatami mats, the traditional Japanese way of describing the size of a room. They had filled it with a stereo and a colour television and had acquired a second-hand kei car, one of Japan’s compact class of light vehicles. The writer presents them as thoroughly happy with the life they were making.
The newspaper pauses to note how unusual their position was. The average age of marriage in Japan was then 27.2 for men and 24.5 for women. Toshiharu and Reiko had already met, married and become parents before either of them reached twenty-one.
Reiko smiles as she tells the reporter that she is extremely happy, so long as “Yocchan”, an affectionate nickname for Yoshiyuki, and her husband remain well. Happiness, she says, is something people must raise and build for themselves.
A fragment of 1971 Ōsaka
There is so much of its time caught in this single piece of paper: celebratory kimono and Western suits, factory work and bus journeys, a colour television, a tiny car and a young family building a life in a small apartment.
In the photograph, the Kadomatsu family stand among other young people celebrating their coming of age.
The article’s young family, Toshiharu and Reiko Kadomatsu with baby Yoshiyuki, surrounded by fellow twenty-year-olds.
Ōsaka Castle rises in the distance. The caption places them on the roof of the Ōsaka Prefectural Government building, surrounded by their contemporaries and holding their baby.
The paper itself carries another kind of record. It arrived torn, yellowed and compressed into the shape of the bag, its creases holding the memory of all those years spent in darkness.
A Travelling Bag
I sourced the bag from a dealer in Ōsaka. The newspaper tells an Ōsaka story, and its photograph was taken in the city also.
It is tempting to imagine that the bag had never travelled very far from Ōsaka before it came to Kimono Living in London. There is no way to know for certain. I cannot tell when the paper was placed inside it, who put it there or who carried the bag before it reached me.
That is part of the fascination of vintage objects. They surrender some of their history and keep the rest to themselves.
What I do know is that a newspaper printed more than fifty-five years ago remained hidden inside this gold silk bag until the day I picked it up in my studio and wondered why it felt unusually full.
Where will it go next?
The bag is a one-of-a-kind Mid-Shōwa clutch in shimmering gold Japanese silk. A crane crosses its front with cherry blossom in its wake over an undulating metallic grid pattern.
In Japanese textile symbolism, the crane is associated with longevity, good fortune and enduring relationships.
For decades, the bag carried a small paper archive of another family’s beginning. Now it has travelled from Ōsaka to London and is ready to become part of someone else’s life: dinners, celebrations, journeys and stories that have not happened yet.
After more than fifty years holding its secret, the gold crane and cherry blossom silk clutch is ready to travel again.
Where it goes next is another story.
Ellie x
Explore vintage Japanese silk bags
Discover the collection of one-of-a-kind vintage Japanese silk clutch bags, individually chosen for their colour, character and remarkable textiles.
1 comment
Ohhhh – I wonder if the bag actually belonged to Reiko, and was sold without anyone realizing this treasured newspaper clipping was tucked inside her favourite clutch purse because it was covered with the tissue.