Put his weight behind wool

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 15

Put his weight behind wool

Sumo wrestler Jesse Takamiyama has pop star status in Japan. Judging by the job he’s .doing for wool, the woolgrowers of New Zealand should set up a fan club for him, too, suggests the Wool Board. For the last couple of years big Jesse has been featured on International Wool Secretariat posters in Japan to encourage handknitting with wool. Now the campaign has been taken a stage further, and in the last four; months 150,000 “Takamiyama” dolls have been sold to people attending handknitting fairs in 67 cities. Visitors were taught how to knit simple garments for the dolls. Knitting outfits for the dolls caught on as a craze, even in the Tokyo office of the International Wool Secretariat, which backed the campaign. In the accompanying photograph, showing off a selection of mini-outfits knitted by her colleagues is 1.W.5.-assist-ant, Mrs Motoko Jitsukawa. ?'•

Production of pure new wool and. wool-rich, handknitting yarn, using mostly New Zealand wool, increased in Japan by an

estimated 33 per cent in the first . 10 months of 1979 compared with the same period of 1978. A feature of life in Japan is that there are many handknitting schools, organised in many cases by manufact u r e r s of knitting machines, where people can learn to knit. The 1.W.5., working with major spinners and wholesalers, mobilised

64,000 students from 3200 of these schools to stage, the fairs. The number of visitors almost trebled to 745,000, against the previous year’s total of 270,000. All 16 department store groups, which sponsored the autumn campaign in co-operation with the 1.W.5., have expressed the wish to make it an annual event, and other retail groups are clamouring to sign up.