About Us

About Shinobugusa

The characters 垣衣 are read shinobugusa.

A plant that takes root on tree trunks and on bare stone, spreading over them like a robe. We took our name from this old word for it.

What shinobugusa names is not settled. Dictionaries give it as another name for the shinobu fern, for the noki-shinobu fern, and also for wasuregusa, the day lily. It is the grass of remembrance, and the grass of forgetting.

To keep it in the heart. To let it go.

Two opposing wishes, gathered into a single name. For a thousand years, likening what they felt to grasses and trees, people have entrusted their hearts to this name. We take those layered feelings as the richness of language itself.

What we wish to inherit is the form of this plant. To stand quietly, and over a long age, to become part of the landscape.

Our roots are in Japan. Our leaves reach toward the world.

Once, the world closed without warning. Even so, we met it again. Carrying things, carrying people, carrying the value behind them.

Rooted in Japan. Open to the world.
— The world, rediscovered.