Honest Craft:Yoshii Towel

Take a look behind the scenes and see how the threads of Yoshii towels are woven together to form the soft, highly absorbent, and quick drying towels they’re known for.

On Shikoku island, the town of Imabari has gained worldwide recognition for its superior towel production. The towels of Imabari are known for their luxurious softness, high absorbency, and their quick drying capabilities. In fact, Imabari towels undergo rigorous quality control in order to win the official Imabari seal of approval and ensure the name of Imabari is associated with high standards.

Yoshii is one such Imabari towel producer, founded in 1967, the era when the towel industry in Imabari started to grow. Yoshii’s towels embody Imabari’s high standards of quality, in addition presenting fun and stylish design choices, such as their collaborations from Japanese design icon, Masara Suzuki.

Every step to produce Yoshii’s soft and absorbent towels is executed with intention and careful consideration, down to selecting the farm where the cotton is grown. Used to spin the threads that make up these luxuriously soft towels, the cotton and how it is treated, are the fundamental elements that make Yoshii towels special. Yoshii looks at qualities such as fineness and length of the cotton fibers, in order to spin cotton threads that are the optimal thickness and twist to construct the perfectly balanced towel.   

Yoshii, like many producers of Imabari towels, uses the sakizarashi method which means the thread used to weave the towel is bleached and dyed before it is woven, bringing out the natural softness of the cotton. This is done at a slower speed using naturally soft and pure water from the Sojagawa River, in order to reduce the amount of chemicals needed to as little as possible to process the thread 

Take a look at how these humble cotton threads all weave together inside Yoshii’s factory, at the hands of skilled textile workers and craftsmen. The result is the soft and playful towels Yoshii is known for.