Cultural Appropriation

Day 266: A recent fascination with the Japanese style of embroidery known as sashiko (translated as "little stabs") and its related craft of boro has raised a question in my mind. In poring over YouTube videos, I encountered one from a Japanese needleworker saying that they felt it was time to speak out about cultural appropriation. I was rather shocked, because as a fiber artist, I use techniques from numerous different cultures without giving thought to the traditions behind them, although I try to mention their origins when I write about them. Nevertheless, I have not felt the need to explain that knitting and crocheting come from the Middle East, or that weaving is an Egyptian art. It would never have occurred to me to think of them as having been culturally appropriated from those sources. However, in pursuing the two distinctively Japanese crafts of sashiko and boro (particularly the latter), I began to wonder where the line might be drawn. To the best of my limited knowledge, nothing resembling boro is found in any other culture. Sashiko has "cousins" in cross-stitch, blackwork/whitework, and chicken-scratch (the latter almost certainly a purely American invention), but none of them has been coupled with patching/darning in the way sashiko has been used to create the unique look of boro. The closest "relative" I can think of would be crazy-quilting when the patches are held down by ornamental embroidery stitches. On the other hand, sashiko is comprised solely of running stitches. Although the way they are placed defines the style as Japanese, the stitch itself is universal.