Weaving
A small village in Isaan, Thailand. Self-sufficient for generations, the villagers also made their own clothing from locally sourced materials. In the 1980s, however, the traditional ways of handcrafting clothing began to disappear. Then came a volunteer group to help revive traditional culture and make women independent. As traditional weaving was resurrecting, Japanese haute couture designer Usaburo Sato visited the village. Charged with a mission of doing what he could to save the Earth, he relocated to Thailand and together with his colleagues started making clothes from local handcrafted fabrics that take on the life energy of the hands that make them, clothes that ‘carry a message about spinning the threads of love, and weaving thoughts and feelings.’
Living
Many people now wear these clothes share the blessings of that message.
One such person is Dr Takashi Funato. Concerned not only with curing patients but also caring for the terminally ill, he organizes a qigong tour to a different destination each year in which terminal cancer patients and their supporters participate.
Two women, Miki Koda and Yuko Morinaka, joined in the tour to Ishigaki as supporters. Miki lost her mother to cancer during the tour to Guilin four years ago, and Yuko her sister following the tour to Yakushima three years ago.
Earth
A woman commissioned Usaburo to making her wedding dress: the singer Yae.
Influenced by her mother, a successful singer, she contracted with a major record company when she was young, but terminated that contract a few years later to pursue her desire to help society by singing. She then met her future husband on the organic farm inherited from her father who died young of cancer. Plowing, sowing and tending the fields; eating what they harvest; knowing they are part of nature: she continues to perform, singing about the gifts of the earth, while enjoying a life rooted in the soil.
Beginning
There comes an opportunity that brings Usaburo, Dr Funato and Yae togther: a fashion show/concert to be held at the Funato Clinic to present clothes full of life energy made in Thailand. The models are doctors, nurses, patients and the family members of people who died of cancer. Volunteers are busy preparing the event.
The day of the show finally arrives, and…
