Threads of a Thousand Years. FUJI TEXTILE WEEK in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi

Original Japanese article here

Mount Fuji rises close enough to feel within reach.

I’m on my way to Fujiyoshida, a small city tucked into the mountains of Yamanashi, to meet Kimberley during FUJI TEXTILE WEEK.

A 2 hour bus ride from my coastal home in Shonan is all it takes for the scenery to shift. Palm trees fade into mountains, then to autumn leaves deepening in colour.

Stepping off the bus, the air is sharp and clear — quietly chilly.

For over a thousand years, this town has been known for its textile production.
I imagined rows of traditional streets, and instead found a central shopping arcade still mostly retro, where small gestures of contemporary design sit quietly among the old.

Like many regional cities in Japan, Fujiyoshida faces depopulation. In 2020, residents aged 65 and over accounted for 30.9% of the population, and the outflow of young people after the age of 20 remains significant.

In response, the city has begun reworking its memory. Disused textile factories, old warehouses, and aged traditional houses are repurposed as exhibition spaces, forming the foundation of FUJI TEXTILE WEEK — a textile art festival where history and contemporary expression gently intersect.

On this particular day, visitors from Japan and abroad moved through the town.
Some, dressed with an urban sensibility, drifted between exhibitions. Others paused, cameras raised, framing Mount Fuji at close range.

Kimberley from London, has just turned thirty. She visited Fujiyoshida a few years ago — and never quite let it go.

This visit marks her return, a second stay in the town that lingered with her.
Why had she chosen to come back here?

There seemed to be something in this landscape — one we often overlook — that held an answer of her own. So, we sat down to talk.

Kimberley Cookey-Gam
Born in 1995, Kimberley is a British-Nigerian artist currently living in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan, for the second time. Working with crochet, she develops sculptural forms, handmade garments and workshops, a practice she calls “tender connections,” moving between art, clothing and people.

Interested in microscopic cellular and cell-like forms, Kimberley at times uses a microscope to zoom into plants, tree bark, skin or strands of hair, enlarging these shared structures through crochet to gently connect us to our surroundings. She has collaborated with Nike and Paloma Wool, and was selected as one of the “Ones to Watch” by the V&A in London. In 2022, she first came to Japan through the Saruya Artist Residency in Fujiyoshida.

Rooted in both City and Village

First, your work seems influenced by your roots — could you tell me a bit about yourself, your childhood memories, and growing up in London?

I was born in London, and from around 6 months to 2 years old, I lived in Nigeria with my dad.  Then I came back to London, went to school there, grew up there — most of my childhood was in London.

But every summer, I would go back to Nigeria for a month, sometimes six weeks.  So I was always connected to my roots. I noticed it because a lot of my friends didn’t go back as much.

I was always very grateful when I came back to London, because life in Nigeria was so different.  It opened me up to a different way of living, and to appreciating small things that are very easy to overlook.

What was life like in Nigeria?

There was lots of nature.
With the Nigerian flag — green, white, green — the green is symbolic of nature. It’s everywhere.

Sometimes I would go to my grandma’s place, and she lives in a village — like, very village. You’d have to go and collect water from somewhere if you wanted to cook or shower.

I was very immersed in a natural, simple and raw environment.

Everything is very open, and the family all live together within a “compound.” There’s grandma, her children, and the children’s children, all sharing one big space. Separate rooms and areas, but one big space — which is very common.

Roughly how many people would live together in a compound?

Oh, well, it depends, but usually it’s a big family. It would be my grandma and her 6 children, and then they all have children, and other aunties and cousins. It’s a lot… maybe 20 to 30.

Wow! That’s a lot of people.

So coming back to London was very different.

Its common here that if you move out from your parents’ house, then you’re usually far away. If your parents get old, then you put them in a home.

But in Nigeria, you can never, ever send your parents somewhere else. They’re always a part of your owncommunity.

I always saw how important it is to be around family, and to live in a very simple way, a natural way of life — keeping things in tune with nature, eating certain foods when they’re in season, and things like this.

Between Two Extremes

How did it feel coming back to London after the summer holidays?

When I was younger, definitely, I felt relief sometimes.

Because we wouldn’t always have electricity in Nigeria. NEPA controls the power, and sometimes they would take it away for a day, or even for a week.

So you’d use a generator to get light, but you’d have to put kerosene to fuel the generator, to make electricity.

So every time I came back to London, I was like, oh my god. Life felt easier, actually.

There were so many things I truly appreciated.
It also made me grateful for being able to live like that — for things I might not have had if my mum hadn’t moved to London.

But it always made me happy to go back to Nigeria. Definitely.
I love being hot as well.

Moving between family as a community, life close to nature, and the very different values of Nigeria and London — it feels like that’s where your own sense of values began to take shape.

Why Crochet? Soft Materials, Sculptural Thinking

In that context, why did you choose to become an artist — and why crochet as your medium?

I always knew I was drawn to being creative, and doing something creative. I started crocheting something like 10 years ago, but back then it was always just making things for friends, or making gifts.

I didn’t really think about crochet as an art form until I went to university. Once I studied sculpture, I tried to keep textiles and sculpture very separate. Because you’re taught that sculpture is usually specific to wood, steel, clay, or metal — very hard materials. And crochet is soft, seen as women’s work, like knitting at home, making clothes, blah, blah, blah. So I always kept them separate. But somehow, they would always come back together.

Going back home a lot made me aware of what my life could have been like.
No one in my family sees art as something serious. It’s never a serious thing. If I say I’m doing art, they’re like, “Huh? What is that?” It’s more like — you’re either a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, things like that.

So I knew I could go down that route. But I had the opportunity being in London to be able to just try a little bit, at least. You can always try something and fail. It’s okay.

I wanted to pursue this and see how it could work. It’s important to find ways to have art in your life, because you can survive without art — you can have the basics — but you can’t really live without artists everywhere.

I believed I wanted to navigate this as a career. And with crochet as the medium, it happened naturally. I would just experiment a little bit. I always felt this material could be manipulated in the same way someone works with steel, wood, clay, or metal. It’s just different, but has so much potential. I wanted to explore that as much as possible.

My old works were more literal — making objects like eyes, or things like this. But now it’s become more abstract, as the themes have become more abstract too.  
So now I’m looking at cells and cellular forms. It’s been a slow process. But it's grown with me.

A lot of artists are influenced by their parents or family — is there anyone in your family who works in art or creative fields?

Not really no. My mum knows how to crochet but she didn’t say anything until maybe five years after I had began crocheting.

We were in the car together in Nigeria. She was looking at me whilse I was crocheting a pair of trousersand then she said, “Pass it to me.”  I gave her my crochet, and she just started making it. I didn’t know she could do that.  

But it was never something that was really around me — I kind of taught myself.  

It felt very natural to me. 

And then, Japan ー Where Fujiyoshida Remains

I’d love to explore what first brought you to Fujiyoshida — that was back in 2022, right?

I wanted to explore the East — outside of the world I knew. It’s so different from London, so different from Nigeria. And I wanted to do something where my time would feel valuable if I travelled.

I thought maybe I could try an artist residency. I searched so much on Google, and then I found the one run by SARUYA — which I honestly thought was fake at first.

It was so perfect, near Mount Fuji. So dreamy. Too dreamy.

I thought, maybe it’s a scam. But I applied.

Then Covid came, so I had to wait 3 years before finally coming in 2022.

I had a truly magical time in Fujiyoshida.. The residency really helped my work. It was nice to have a studio space, to push my work a little, and experiment more.
So yeah — it was really fun. 

On the way back home, I cried at the airport and as the plane took off. I was like, okay — I have to come back for a little bit. 

And now, you returned to Fujiyoshida 6 months ago — what drew you here this time, and what are you hoping to experience?

The 6-week residency at SARUYA felt like a honeymoon. Everything was so perfect. I needed to stay longer to feel a range of different emotions within Japan, as well as experience the reality too.

I’ve always been intrigued with Japanese culture, and the way nature and intention are part of daily life — it feels imbued in everything.  It was more the nature aspect, or wabi-sabi, and even ikigai — in the West it’s very different from the way we hear it, compared to how it’s taught in Japan.

I hope to learn more about myself and my practice — to strengthen my intuition and my sense of self.

To experience as much art as possible, and to spend time in nature. To learn about natural dye here, and maybe travel to places like Amami Oshima.

And to connect with people through my workshops, and through many forms of creativity.

Relationships with SNS ー Connections On and Off

Social media can be overwhelming, but you seem to keep some distance intentionally — taking breaks from Instagram sometimes and sharing updates via a newsletter. 

At the same time, being in Japan, far from London and Nigeria, SNS can be an important way to stay connected with family and friends. 

How do you think about your relationship with it?

I’m trying to improve my relationship with SNS. It’s difficult sometimes, because now that’s the way you build a broader audience or show your work. But I try to find a balance — making sure I have time away from it. 

Because It’s very easy to compare yourself to other people, and to get into the flow of making something just to share it, as opposed to making something because you want to. Just for you.

So I needed to take a little bit of a break, just to know, “Okay, why am I making what I’m making?”

But it’s also important, because it’s a tool to build community. I can reach people around the world, keep in contact with people. And I can get insights into things I might not have thought about before, just through being online.

Recently, one way I’ve tried to be more intentional about how I post is by starting a mailing list. Every month I write a newsletter and send it to people who’ve signed up. It’s a really nice way to keep a sense of community too.

Outside of that, what I love about being in Fujiyoshida is how tight the community is. Everyone kind of knows each other. Everything is so close, so it’s easy to become familiar with people. I invite people over for dinner, go to other people’s houses, go on trips together. I just try to be a friendly face to the people around me.

I think being connected is really important. Being online can create connections, but sometimes it feels false compared to real life. My hope is to have an online connection and be able to make that exist offline — not only on the screen, but outside of it too.

Tender connections

Could you tell me about the idea of ‘tender connections’, which feels central to your practice?

With “tender connections”, its something that allows me to lean into my softness. And the word tender came to me as something that could encompass the direction I want my work to go, or something I feel connected to.

Especially growing up in a city, it can make you very hard sometimes. Everything can feel like “go, go, go”. There’s so much hardness in the world around us, so for me it’s really important to try to maintain a tenderness.

That shows through the materials that I use as well. Because it’s soft — and being able to combine that tenderness with a hard material is really important for me. It makes an environment more comfortable, I think, for others to feel like they can exist within.

For example, with the workshops, I’m always trying to figure out how I can make them not too difficult — where people don’t want to make anything because it feels too hard — but still a little bit challenging. Soft enough that I can offer tea, or have music, and different things that allow for tenderness, to help creativity grow.

Looking Ahead

And finally, I’m curious — what’s your next plan?

That’s a good question… Japan was my next plan. So for now, I want to do a few more residencies and build a good body of work where I can experiment with natural dyes, and kind of scale up with this style — making bigger pieces, and trusting myself to make bigger pieces too. I see myself studying for a few years - either a Textiles MA and then maybe, go into midwifery in a few years’ time.

Because I’m also really interested in care. When I was younger, I worked as a carer for elderly people for a little while. And I’m interested in the opposite — from caring for really elderly people to newborn babies — and understanding what care is..

I think we all have an idea of care in our minds. 

But doing something where you can’t centre yourself at all feels really important, in understanding what care is: What it means to look after someone, or care for someone, or something.

I don’t have a step-by-step plan. But definitely, I want to grow through experimentation.

Moving between Nigeria and London — two places with entirely different rhythms — and then coming to Japan, shaped by a different sensibility, Kimberley seems drawn to opposing worlds.

What runs through her work is a quiet attention to tenderness and connection — and a form of care that doesn’t centre the self.

Thank you for sharing stories from places many of us rarely get to see.

During FUJI TEXTILE WEEK, I joined her crochet workshop on the day of our interview. Off screen, tender connections took shape — a soft atmosphere, as people from different places experimented side by side, gentle ties forming quietly in the room.

From here in Fujiyoshida, what kinds of connections will Kimberley continue to weave?

Kimberley Cookey-Gam @crochetcookey
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Interviewd by Natsuko
Translation assisted by AI 

Selected images courtesy of Kimberley