Hakata Machiya Hometown Museum

This guide to the Hakata Machiya Hometown Museum traces Hakata-ori weaving back to 1241, when merchant Yazaemon Mitsuda returned from Song-dynasty China with a new way of driving thread through cloth. It follows how his descendants packed thousands of fine silk threads into a single sash, and the test weavers still use to judge their own work, called kinunarashi, meaning making the silk rustle. You will hear how the cloth became tribute for the Tokugawa shogunate.