Japanese stitching techniques

Traditional Japanese hand ball

thumb|Detail of a mid-19th-century kimono decorated using , with white [[cotton threads on an indigo-dyed plain weave background (Metropolitan Museum of Art)]] thumb|upright=2|Child's sleeping mat (), late 1800s. The stitches are decorative, but also functional; they hold the pieced cotton rags together

right|thumb|Women stitching for men going to war in China, 1937 A or one thousand stitch is a belt or strip of cloth stitched 1,000 times and given as a Shinto amulet by Japanese women and imperial subjects to soldiers going away to war.