Breaking Dormancy and Recasting with Policy Changes: Indigo Dyeing Tradition and Private Museums in Contemporary China

To examine how Kubo reawakened China’s dormant indigo dyeing tradition and how Chinese indigo dyers recast the longtime tradition in line with the government’s recent changes in cultural policies, this article draws on cases of Kubo and Chinese dyers who have both private museums and indigo-related businesses. In China a movement to re-evaluate own intangible cultural heritages started around the time of UNESCO’s 1998 adoption of regulations relating to the Proclamation of Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Before that, however, in 1990, Kubo Masa, a Japanese woman, opened the Blue-Calico Museum in Shanghai to preserve and promote China’s tradition of indigo dyeing. Kubo made efforts to sell indigo dyed cloth in both Japan and China. In the 1980s and 1990s, she visited towns in Jiangsu and Zhejian to understand the folk culture around indigo dyed cloth. These efforts revealed the possibility of an individual in contributing both commercially and culturally to maintaining a cultural tradition. After Kubo, some Chinese indigo dyers started to recast production of indigo dyestuff and indigo dyed cloth. Additionally, amid governmental policy changes in the 2000s, dyers began to operate private museums of indigo dyeing and dyed cloth. This implies that private museums can potentially promote and preserve intangible cultural heritage in China through individual creative efforts