(1917–2003) was a Japanese textile artist. He was most famous for reviving and in part reinventing an otherwise lost late 15th- to early 16th-century textile dye technique known as (lit. "flowers at the crossroads"), which became the main focus for much of his life's work. As homage to the original technique and its legacy, he named the technique . Kubota devised a new method of dyeing that produce unique richly coloured products, and he experimented with modern fabrics that would take well to the dyes and stitch-resist work. Biography Itchiku Kubota was born in Kanda, Tokyo, in 1917, the son of an antique dealer. Kubota grew up in an environment rich with opportunities to view traditional Japanese art: the neighbourhood in which he lived was filled with dye workshops. In 1931, at the age of 14, Kubota left school to become the apprentice of Kobayashi Kiyoshi, a Tokyo-based kimono artist who specialized in hand-painted dyework (a paste resist-dyeing technique). Kubota also studied other techniques for decorating fabrics, as well as Japanese-style landscape painting and portraiture. By the age of 19, he had established a dye studio of his own. Kubota first saw a fragment of fabric dyed in the style at the age of 20 in the Tokyo National Museum. The technique would go on to become the main focus of much of his life's work: (lit. "flowers at the crossroads") was a popular dyeing method in the Muromachi (1336-1573) to early Edo period (1603-1867), before it fell out of fashion and its method of production was lost. The technique utilised stitched resist dyeing (), which was then elaborated upon with hand-painted dyework, typically in floral motifs. Gold and silver leaf and embroidery were also used to embellish the designs. However, little is known about the original meaning of the word , or the technique's original method of production, despite the knowledge of its combined techniques. By the beginning of the 17th century, other styles of dyeing and surface design (such as ) had become increasingly fashionable and vanished, leaving little trace of how the designs were created. Kubota became fascinated by the technique and its unknown method of creation, as no other techniques in living memory used a combination of tie-dyeing and hand-painted dyework, making it very unusual for use on modern kimono. Because no instructions survived explaining the reproduction of the technique, and because the silk fabric necessary