‘The road was frozen… Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi [broad sash]. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.’

When I think of the kimono (literally: ‘a thing to wear’) my thoughts turn to Yukiguni, the 1948 book by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. The novel is set in a city close to Minakami Onsen, a spa town where I used to rent a mountain cabin. For me, Kawabata’s images of kimono-clad women scurrying about in the snow were very real. However, my best memories of kimonos were in the epicentre of the craft, Kyoto, where I would dine with geisha at traditional wooden machiya houses in Gion, Kyoto’s pleasure quarter.

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