Infusion

Japanese bamboo ruler from arashiyama bamboo forest, kyoto

When we hear “infusion,” we might think of tea-leaves giving up colour and character to hot water. But the next step is quieter and more interesting: that infused water then infuses us. It changes our mood, our body temperature, our attention. The craft enters the drink, and the drink enters the drinker.

Shirtmaking works the same way. Tools and habits seep into the cloth, and the finished shirt eventually seeps into the wearer - how he or she stands, how they move, what they notice when they look into the mirror. The result isn’t just cotton plus thread; it’s the sum of a hundred tiny decisions that leave traces you can’t always see but can definitely feel.

Take something as simple as a ruler. Imagine a bamboo rule made in Kyoto - the city whose famous Arashiyama bamboo grove has become the shorthand image for Japanese bamboo. Bamboo isn’t a sentimental choice; it’s practical: light, stable, pleasant to the touch. Some Japanese makers even boast that, cared for, their bamboo rules can last a lifetime or more. That kind of promise changes how you handle it: you slow down a little, you draw lines with intention.

Then there are the markings on the ruler themselves - the language of the tool. Traditional Japanese rules sometimes follow the shaku–sun–bu system (1 shaku ≈ 30.3 cm, 10 sun per shaku, 10 bu per sun). On some kane rules you won’t see big numerals at all, just a full-width tick for each sun and a dot every five bu - little waypoints that subtly change how your eye spaces a line and how your hand measures without counting. Other “classic style” rules in centimeters mark distance with small hoshi (dots) at repeating intervals, so you can read from either end. Modern sewing rules, by contrast, often use high-legibility red/black scales with bolder centimeter ticks.

Every time I draft a collar stand or mark a cuff curve, that ruler’s logic filters into the shirt. A dot at “five bu” makes me pause at a slightly different cadence; a bolder centimeter tick makes me speed up. The bamboo’s warmth, the low glare of its surface, the specific spacing of its marks - these things show in the garment. The line I just drew becomes a cut; the cut becomes a seam; the seam becomes the shirt’s posture on a moving body. It’s an indelible, invisible fingerprint.

Infusion is cumulative. The sewing machine’s hum, the pressure of the iron, the choice of placket, the collar band height I’ve learned works for certain necks - each choice leaves trace amounts of itself behind. And later, when someone slips the shirt on, that infusion continues: he stands a touch straighter, the collar sits where it should, the cuff on the right arm is positioned in a way to show off the watch being worn. The shirt changes the wearer, just as the tool changed the shirt.

Tea to water, water to drinker.

Tool to line, line to shirt, shirt to wearer.

That’s the loop I care about. And that’s why I obsess over simple things, like a bamboo ruler with odd little dots, because they are the quietest ways a place and a culture can pass through my hands and into the shirt.