What Price Honor?

About 50 Japanese have been declared to be "living cultural assets." Among them are Kabuki and no actors, potters and painters, and even a couple of old folks who know how to do Kurume-gasuri, a rare, 150-year-old hand-weaving process using white cotton threads and blue dye to produce unique dappled patterns. Tomikichi Moriyama, 70, and his wife Toyono, 67, hand weavers, were delighted with the honor when it came two years ago. After all, only ten other weavers in Japan--most now too old for work--knew Kurume-gasuri] the Moriyamas' son Torao, like most younger people, preferred more profitable machine weaving.

Machine weavers at home spin off 35 ft. of ordinary cloth daily, while the Moriyamas labored all day to produce a scant 2 ft. of Kurume-gasuri. They took their new responsibilities seriously. In all of 1958 the pair made only 420 ft., which the government promised to buy. But when 140 ft. of it was rejected by a special government committee as "not living up to living cultural asset standards," and the committee paid only $300 for what it accepted, Tomikichi Moriyama said to his wife: "Ah, such mental suffering we have to endure since we became living cultural assets!"

In February, old and worn from his labors, Tomikichi died, and wid01wed Toyono moved with her son into a little house in Hirokawa. Last weekend Toyono slipped away from a small party her son was giving, politely pulled the paper-screen door of her closet shut, and hanged herself with the blue-and-white sash of her Kurume-gasuri kimono.

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