"[Taira Toshiko], born 1921, a master weaver and a “Living National Treasure”, has devoted her life to the preservation of bashofu, a cloth made of banana fiber. During the war, she lived in Kurashiki where she studied with Kichinosuke Tonomura, the founder of the Kurashiki Folk Craft Museum. She returned to her village, Kijoka, in the northern part of the island to establish her workshop in 1948. At 81, she still performs each step of the labor-intensive process with extraordinary vigor. Taira has had exhibitions in Japan, Hawaii, Washington, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is the founder of a special cooperative, the Association for the Preservation of Kijoka Bashofu that is now under the directorship of her daughter-in-law, Mieko Taira."

From: Long House, "2002-Okinawa Now." Accessed 2002 May 10 on the World Wide Web at http://www.longhouse.org.