Although horses can live up to 30 years, they are slaughtered at around the age of 4 and turned into horse meat. Farmers say that the only way to preserve the horse breed for the next generation is to breed them and eat them as horse meat.
I come from a family in Gonohe Town, and I often ate horse meat hotpot made by my grandmother. When I learned that horse skin was being thrown away after eating horse meat, I started an activity to turn that skin into “leather.”
When I visited the slaughterhouse and witnessed the work of butchering a horse, I couldn’t help but feel the profound meaning and transience of eating an animal. However, in contrast to that, the pure white leather that was produced was incredibly beautiful.
Is it possible for the tears of this era to be mended by human hands? With this thought in mind, I tailored a garment that made use of the shape of a single piece of leather. Without deciding on a pre-determined shape, I made holes with a needle and tied the leather with sashiko thread dyed with madder. The traces of trial and error were smudged with the madder color, and it was as if I was reliving the pain of butchering a horse.
The white robe that naturally took shape in this way looked like the robes worn by priests in the past when humans and animals supported each other. When the threads of this robe were untied, it returned to the shape of a single piece of horse skin. When this skin is tied by someone else, what kind of wish will be put into it?
Material：Horse leather, Sashiko, Harness
Photography by YASUNARI KIKUMA / ©︎ FASHION FRONTIER PROGRAM
Tatsumi Iwai
Instagram：@gobu_japan
