As I entered my early thirties, I found myself reflecting on the history held within my thirty-two years—and the deeper history carried quietly in my genes.
Where did the foundations of my sensibilities come from?
What shaped the way I think, create, and move through the world?
These questions stayed with me during the spring of 2025.
When I searched for the starting point of my identity,
my mind naturally returned to Gunma, the place where I lived from age zero to twenty.
I was born and raised in the rural side of Kiryu City,
a town once known for its weaving culture.
After graduating from a fashion vocational school at twenty,
I moved to Tokyo and lived there for about ten years—
but the foundation of “who I am” had already been formed long before that.
Gunma is quiet, spacious, honest.
And that quietness somehow shaped the atmosphere I still carry.
Gunma was once a region that prospered through silk—
a place where everything from sericulture to weaving could be completed locally.
Its silk textiles were exported around the world,
including to Europe.
When I was a child in the 1990s,
I wasn’t wearing silk every day,
but the traces of that heritage were everywhere.
My mother often told me stories of how,
when she was young,
my grandmother’s family raised silkworms behind the house.
When I stepped outside,
I would see signs with the word “Silk Road,”
and we had museums dedicated to weaving,
foods and products that carried the word “silk,”
and a quiet pride that remained in the local air.
Gunma may seem simple and understated from the outside,
but when you look more closely—
its cultural depth begins to reveal itself.
To me, Gunma is a place of unadorned honesty.
Once flourishing through silk,
the industry has become quieter now.
While some people are exploring new uses for silkworms—
in food, skincare, or biotechnology—
it hasn’t yet become mainstream.
Still, there is something incredibly grounded
in the people who live there.
From the perspective of someone who later lived in Tokyo
and experienced life abroad,
I began to notice a certain weight in the way Gunma people approach things.
A commitment to authenticity.
A quiet but unwavering expectation of quality.
An aversion to unnecessary showiness.
Even the older people in Kiryu—
though they rarely wore bright colors—
dressed with an understated sense of style.
When I trace back my own path—
attending a fashion vocational school,
struggling with sensitive skin,
being naturally drawn to silk as a material,
and trying to approach work with sincerity—
I realize that these tendencies are not random.
They are inheritances.
They come from Gunma.
Gunma people may not speak loudly about their values,
but the spirit of the silk era—
its discipline, its modesty, its pursuit of refinement—
still lives quietly in them.
And it lives quietly in me.
Quiet moments often reveal more about who we are
than any loud achievement ever could.