A ceremonial maiwai Good Catch Jacket worn by Ann Lydon, September 2005. This jacket is in the collection of the Takahashi family and was awarded after a good year in the marine supply industry. Because it belonged to the owner of the company, this particular maiwai is made of silk.

The Maiwai - The Good Catch Jacket – A Brief History

The tradition of the maiwai seems to have originated in the early 19th century on the coast of the Boso Peninsula and then spread northward along the Pacific coast. The maiwai began as a bolt of indigo cloth awarded to the members of a fishing company to celebrate a particularly good catch or a good season. Each member would then make a jacket to his own measurements out of the cloth. The cloth was decorated with the crest of the company and elaborate artwork depicting the particular industry, such as whaling or fishing. The tradition continued after World War II, but by the 1960s, companies began awarding modern sporting jackets and other gifts rather than the traditional maiwai.

This maiwai being modeled by Tim Thomas outside Suzuki’s maiwai shop in Kamogawa City, is a modern one.

Today there are but two shops in Minamiboso that continue to make maiwai, and most of their business is in making smaller framed versions of the artwork rather than the full garment. These framed maiwai awards are still made in the traditional way through an elaborate process of dying and hand painting on long bolts of cloth. Making a full-size maiwai jacket is extremely labor intensive, and here in the early 21st century, such a garment costs many thousands of dollars. Even the smaller framed versions cost hundreds of dollars each. Mr. Suzuki, one of the two remaining maiwai artisans believes that the tradition of making maiwai will end with his generation.

Maiwai artist, Suzuki-san painting the designed on a smaller commemorative maiwai. Once the designs are hand-painted on the cloth it will be dyed, and then cut into individual pieces and framed.

The foyer of Suzuki’s maiwai shop in Kamogawa City.

The “Monterey” Maiwai – Ide and the Abalone Good Catch Jacket

When the abalone divers from Minamiboso first arrived on the Monterey Peninsula in 1897, they found a fishery that was virtually untouched. By the 1850s the impact of the two traditional hunters of abalone – sea otters and the Rumsien Indians – was insignificant. From 1853 to the 1890s, immigrant Chinese abalone hunters worked the intertidal area, but the offshore abalone population continued to grow unmolested.

Japanese free divers, Point Lobos, 1897. Three free divers came to Point Lobos from Minamiboso, but their light cotton dive garments were no match for the painfully cold water.

After a brief experiment using free divers from Minamiboso (the California coastal water was just too COLD!), in 1898 three helmet divers came to take their place, and the modern abalone diving industry on the coast of North America was born. With the assistance of Alexander Macmillan Allan, the owner of Point Lobos, an early diving company was formed under the leadership of Hyakutaro Ide and T. Mori. We know that the divers themselves were from Minamiboso, but we know very little about Ide and Mori themselves.

Fortunately for later historians, this new industry quickly attracted the attention of local newspapers. An early 1899 newspaper article described the Point Lobos operation and several “expert divers” who “spend most of the time in the water diving for the deep sea abalones.” During these early years the abalone were dried and shipped to markets in China and Japan.

We can only imagine how easy it must have been during these first years of the industry for the divers to find and harvest abalone. Divers during those early years describe the ocean floor as being a virtual carpet of abalone. Some time during the 1899-1901 era, the catch was successful enough for Ide to award his employees a traditional maiwai jacket. The bolts of cloth were made in Japan and shipped to California. We do not know how many jackets were awarded to Ide employees in California, but one of them was given to a helmet diver from the Kurihara family who came from Senda village at the tip of the Boso Peninsula.

Disaster

Disaster struck Ide and his company in the summer of 1901. According to a local newspaper article, the company’s entire shipment of dried abalone spoiled while in transit to Japan, and the company went bankrupt. The Japanese abalone industry along the Monterey county coast was also facing some early restrictions brought by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. An ordinance passed in 1899 confined the diving operations to the coastline south of the Carmel River and in waters twenty feet deep or more.

Most of the divers employed by Ide soon found employment in new abalone diving companies south of the Carmel River, and despite the regulations, the industry survived.

The Ide and Company maiwai represents the bright, shining and optimistic birth of the abalone diving industry in California. Hyakutaro Ide and his colleagues saw nothing but a good future ahead when they awarded the jacket to their employees. The jacket represents a moment of collaboration and success. They could not have foreseen either the collapse of their company in 1901, nor the virulent anti-Japanese movement that would come boiling up all over California by 1905. The Japanese and United States governments were on a good footing and the future looked bright. It was not an accident that Ide chose to frame his company logo with the crossed flags of the two countries. His optimism about a future of cooperation and collaboration between his fellow Japanese businessmen and the United States is there at the top of the maiwai. He could not have imagined the long, painful and tragic slide into war and destruction that was to mark the next four decades.

The symbol of Japanese-American cooperation at the top of the Ide Company maiwai. The symbol within the circle was the official logo of the Ide Company.

Based on all that we know at this writing, we believe that the Ide maiwai was awarded by Hyakutoro Ide to his employees in California some time between the spring of 1899 and the spring of 1901.

After years of work and recent publicity through NHK television and Japanese newspapers, it would appear that there are but two intact “Monterey” maiwai in existence. One is in the collection of the Awa Prefectural Museum in Tateyama, the other was the jacket given to the Kurihara diver and brought back to Japan. There is a third partial maiwai in the possession of another one of the diver families in Senda. The family cut the design from the bottom of the maiwai and it hangs framed together with the ancestors. Thus, as far as we know, there are only two Monterey maiwai jackets.

This is Ide and Company maiwai owned by the Awa Prefectural Museum in Minamiboso. As far as we know this is one of only two intact maiwai with this design remaining in the world.

The Kurihara Maiwai Jacket

Ishimatsu Kurihawa was a helmet diver at Point Lobos. The signature of the photographer on the lower right indicates that this portrait was taken in Monterey, California.

Most of the Minamiboso abalone divers who came to work along the California coast eventually returned to their home villages, and Ishimatsu Kurihara was no exception. When he returned to Minamiboso, the maiwai was carefully folded and wrapped and put away with other family heirlooms. Kurihara also brought back several large, polished abalone shells from California to remind himself of those remarkable early years when the huge abalone stretched across the ocean floor as far as he could see. Several of the larger shells were hung in the family’s tokonoma, the shrine where each family pays its respects to the ancestors.

Many of the divers who went to Monterey returned home with large, polished shells as gifts. Today those shells continue to hang in family alcoves all throughout Minamiboso.

The Kurihara family home survived earthquake and World War II, and during that time the maiwai was safely stored away. However, as the effects of years of warfare began to squeeze down into every village and hamlet in Japan, the Kurihara’s found themselves unable to buy or make warm clothing, and they had to remove the maiwai from storage and wear it to keep warm. Mrs. Kurihara told us recently that she wore the coat for about two years before finally being able to put it back into storage.

She apologized for the wear on the jacket, but we see that wear as yet another indication of the inter-connectedness that we share across the Pacific.

The Kuriharas holding their maiwai. Note the fading across the center of the jacket and the small tear beneath the arm. Mrs. Kurihara had to wear the coat during the difficult and dark years following World War II.

The Jacket is Coming Home

In February 2006, at an emotional meeting at the Kurihara house in Senda, the family generously and without condition gave us the maiwai so that it can be returned to California and put on display in Monterey. Through the long-term work and support of Japanese historians, Toshio Oba, Yoshio Ota, and Nasakazu Suzuki, the Kurihara family became convinced that the maiwai belongs in Monterey where it was first awarded over a century ago.

On the evening of Friday, April 28, at the Maritime Musuem, Monterey, the jacket will be put on public display where it will remain for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, the Awa Prefectural Museum will be opening a special exhibit with their “Monterey maiwai” in early April so that the two jackets will bracket the Pacific, representing the resumption of close contact between the people of Minamiboso and the Monterey Bay Region.


Completing the Circle

When the Kurihara maiwai arrives in Monterey, it will have completed two transpacific journeys. The circle will be complete.

The Kurihara Maiwai with the assembled Ocean Queen Team, Senda Village, Minamiboso, February 2006. Through the efforts of this transpacific team, the Kurihara jacket will be going to Monterey to be put on display.

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Ama divers • Maiwai jacket • Blue-eyed doll