Fashioning a New Look for the Meiji Empress and Japan

A single court dress takes center stage in the story of its creation, symbolic impact, and discoveries made during conservation that turned presuppositions upside down. Towards the end of her life, Empress Haruko (1849–1914), consort of the Meiji Emperor and best known by her dowager name of Shōken, presented the long train and bodice of one of her court dresses to Daishōji Imperial Convent. Why? Was she returning her first totally Japan-made Western court dress to its source and her birth city? With its elegantly woven rose design embellished with goldwork, was the dress in fact produced in Japan? Fashioned concurrently with the first Japanese modern constitution, the dress was emblematic of the Japanese achievements on the road to modernization. It positioned the empress alongside Western royalty, and placed Japan on the world stage. A hundred and thirty years after its creation, the dress needed conservation work to stabilize the fragile fabric.