* Kogin-sashi is a needlework craft developed during mid-Edo period (around 1700) in Japan’s northeastern Tsugaru region, present-day Aomori Prefecture. As regional law prohibited farmers from wearing cotton clothes at that time, women turned to hemp (cultivatable in the region’s cold climate) as an alternative means to fashion farming clothes. Sashiko, a dense form of stitching, was used to reinforce the cloth and improve its heat-retaining ability. This stitching, used to form geometrical patterns on indigo-dyed hemp, is the basis of Kogin-sashi craftwork.