Mino (straw cape)

A mino (蓑) is a traditional Japanese garment, a raincoat made out of straw. Traditional mino are an article of outerwear covering the entire body, although shorter ones resembling grass skirts were also historically used to cover the lower body alone. Similar straw capes were also used in China,[1] Vietnam and Korea.

A mino straw cape

Overview

Rice straw has water repellent properties. Raindrops striking a mat of straw will tend to flow along the fibers of the mat, rather than penetrate underneath it. For this reason, early Japanese rain gear was often made of straw, which has the added benefits of being cheap to acquire, easy to weave and fasten, and light in weight. It is, however, bulky in size, and highly flammable. In earlier eras, straw clothing had an additional advantage: it afforded a significant degree of camouflage in certain terrain,[1] including forests and wetlands, similar to modern ghillie suits.

As synthetic fibers and later plastics were introduced to Japan, mino lost much of their practicality and fell out of use. Today, however, they are still worn as costumes in various traditional folk traditions and festivals, such as the new year celebrations of the Oga Peninsula, where men dress as ogre-like namahage wearing masks and mino.

Sarumino (猿蓑 Monkey's Raincoat) is a 1691 anthology of Bashō-school poetry. It is widely considered to be one of the most important compilations of classical Japanese verse.[2][3]

The bagworm Pokémon, Burmy, is called Minomucchi (ミノムッチ) in Japanese, which is a portmanteau of Minomushi (ミノムシ), the Japanese word for bagworm, and the Japanese suffix —cchi, which denotes a cute nickname. Minomushi itself is a portmanteau of mino and mushi, meaning “bug”. This means that Burmy's Japanese name roughly translates to mean “a cutie in a straw coat.”[4] Also, the Ice-type Pokémon Snorunt is based on a yukinko, a japanese folklore spirit from the snow, wearing a mino.

See also

References
  1. "Japanese Mino (Rainwear)". costumes.unc.edu. Retrieved 2019-11-24.
  2. "Sarumino (The Monkey's Raincoat), book in hanshibon format, two volumes Edited by Kyorai and Boncho Genroku 4 (1691) Izutsuya Shobei, publisher | 細道・より道・松尾芭蕉". basho-yamadera.com. Retrieved 2019-11-24.
  3. Shirane, Haruo (2008-04-21). Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900 (Abridged ed.). Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-51614-3.
  4. Schmidt-Jeffris, R. A.; Nelson, J. C. (2018-09-15). "Gotta Catch 'Em All!Communicating Entomology with Pokémon". American Entomologist. 64 (3): 159–164. doi:10.1093/ae/tmy048. ISSN 1046-2821.
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