His experimentations with different materials and technology earned him widespread recognition as well as patents and awards.
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
Junichi Arai was born in Japan into a family of weavers who made elegant obis of silk — sashes to wrap around the waist of kimonos. So when he, following tradition, took up the craft as well, at age 13, it didn’t take long for him to establish himself.
It was 1945, toward the end of World War II. The family’s steel looms had been melted down for the war effort, and
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