The Nishimonai Bon dance is restrained and dignified. “It is so quiet,” says Koike. “It connects with the spirits, which is what the Bon dance is for.” Women perform the central role in this long-preserved ritual, practicing the dance and preparing the costumes all year as a part of everyday routine. On the day of the dance, the women then turn their backs on their housework, don the exquisite costumes, and throw themselves into this non-everyday interaction with their ancestors. Koike says, “I think that preserving this dance is important for the town, and also in the family.” The Bon dance’s twin facets of the everyday and non-everyday is conveyed in costumes so finely balanced between the gaudy and the plain.

Koike’s attention is caught especially by the edge stitching of the garments. Each household takes apart old garments passed down in the family and sews the parts together in new ways. The central sections use colorful Yuzen resist-dyed fabrics, like a picture, and outside plainer fabrics provide the frame. Observing these exquisite dispositions, Koike says she loves seeing “how design-like qualities emerge unconsciously through the ingenuity and imagination of the maker.”
A seamstress shows Koike garments made more than a century ago. “I was jolted by the sweat stains on these garments that have been worn and cherished over the years,” says Koike. “That brought tears to my eyes.” The edge-stitched dance costumes recall the forms of the people who came before.

The Nishimonai Bon dancers wear hoods known as Hikosazukin and low-brimmed straw hats, the Amikasa. Koike observes that the astonishing shapes not only generate an extraordinary atmosphere but, by hiding the face, also draws attention to the beauty and features of the garments. “It is dramatic and a kind of costume play,” says Koike. “The dancers surely feel raised to a higher dimension.” “The dancers,” she continues, “their faces concealed, are free to focus on the dance. Perhaps they enter a trance-like state?” Koike’s imagination leads her from one compelling intuition to another. “Are the faces beneath the Hikosazukin those of the dead?” These props can be said to further underpin the spirituality of the Bon dance.