Mountain Sunset Happi Coat 'Yuyake'

A samurai at dusk against a red and orange sky, mountains and a lake below

The lower half of this happi coat is a landscape at sunset. A sky in red and orange fades up into the black of the shoulders, a red sun sits low over dark mountains, a lake reflects it at the hem, birds cross the sky, pines stand in silhouette, and on the right side of the back a samurai stands looking at all of it, topknot and two swords, drawn in black against the light. The scene runs across the back and both fronts, and onto the sleeves.

It is the one coat in the range that is a picture rather than a pattern, and the only one with a horizon. It reads as a poster from a distance and as a painting from close, and the black above the sky is what makes the colours burn.

The name, Yuyake, is the evening glow, the sky after the sun has gone below the mountains, and the coat is that ten minutes.

It is printed, not painted, with the sky graded from orange to black in the dye rather than in a seam. The cloth is polyester, firmly woven with a dry, matte hand and a clean drape, chosen because a happi is a coat for standing in a crowd in July and must stay light, hold a flat collar band and keep its print through a summer of washing. It is unlined.

The cut is the classic happi: straight through the body, falling to mid-thigh, with wide three-quarter sleeves, a flat collar band and no fastening. It hangs open over a white tee and stays open, with a slit at each side.

From across a street it is a black coat with fire at the bottom. From close the birds are single strokes, the pines have branches, and the samurai has his swords. The reflection in the lake is the detail most people miss first and like best.

Wear it over a white tee and white trousers, as in the photograph, or over black so the coat is all sky. It is the coat for the evening of the festival, and for the walk home after it.

The collar band is flat and black and runs down the middle of the sky, a post in front of a sunset. The coat is longer and straighter than a haori, and the landscape uses the length: sky at the top, mountains in the middle, water at the hem, in the order a landscape should have.

Sizes run from S to 5XL. It is cut to Asian sizing and runs small, so take one size up from your usual. Between two sizes, take the larger.