The tenugui, one strip of cotton and the quiet jobs it does

It is late afternoon at a sentō (銭湯), a neighbourhood bathhouse. An older man lowers himself into the hot bath with a folded blue-and-white cloth balanced on his head. A hotel would not call it a towel. It is thin enough to see light through and its ends are not hemmed. In the changing room afterwards he wrings it nearly dry with two twists, wipes himself down and hangs it over the edge of his basket. The cloth is a tenugui (手ぬぐい). Once you notice one you start to see them everywhere: tucked into a waistband at a festival, tied under a kendo helmet, unfolded on a rakugo stage to stand in for a letter.

A strip of cotton with its ends left raw

A tenugui is a single length of plain-weave cotton, roughly a metre long and a third as wide, dyed or printed on one face or both. Before the thick terry taoru (タオル) became the usual bathroom towel, Japanese households dried their hands, faces and bodies with cloths like this. The tenugui still beats terry in one way: it dries within an hour or so on a hotel radiator or a balcony rail. That matters on a trip where you are rinsing something in the sink every night.

The short ends are cut and left unfinished, a style called kiripanashi (切りっぱなし). New buyers often take this for a defect. With no seam, water drains straight out of the open edge and there is no damp hem to stay wet. Loose threads appear for the first few washes and then stop. Shops usually advise snipping them with scissors rather than pulling them.

The fabric softens with use. A tenugui that has been through a summer of washing hangs differently from a new one: limp, slightly faded and pleasant against the skin. People who use them talk about that softness the way others talk about an old pair of jeans.

At the bath, the basin and the summer platform

In a sentō or an onsen, the small cloth you carry into the bathing area stays out of the shared water. Regulars fold it and set it on their heads or leave it on the stone rim of the bath. Dropping it into the tub is the mistake staff and neighbours notice first. A tenugui suits this job better than a terry face towel, because folded into quarters it is light enough to stay on your head. Some onsen ryokan give guests a thin printed cloth with the inn's name and crest on it. It is usually yours to keep, and the front desk can confirm. In effect these cloths are the inn's calling card.

Away from the bath, the cloth fills a gap that travellers find quickly. Public restrooms in Japan do not always have paper towels or a working hand dryer, which is why so many people carry a hankachi (ハンカチ), a small handkerchief, in a pocket or bag. A folded tenugui does the same work and takes up less room than terry. On a humid July platform at Shinjuku (新宿) or Umeda (梅田) you will see office workers pressing one to the back of the neck while they wait. Others soak one in a station washroom and drape it over their shoulders for the walk outside.

On the stage, under the helmet, around the forehead

Rakugo (落語) is seated comic storytelling, performed at variety halls called yose (寄席). Two to try in Tokyo are Suzumoto Engeijō (鈴本演芸場) in Ueno (上野) and Asakusa Engei Hall (浅草演芸ホール). A rakugo performer has only two props: a folding fan, the sensu (扇子), and a tenugui. The fan turns into chopsticks, a pipe or a writing brush. The tenugui turns into a wallet, a letter being read aloud, a ledger or a hot sweet potato passed from hand to hand. Performers have their own tenugui printed with their name and crest and hand them out at milestones such as promotion to shin'uchi (真打), the top rank. For devoted fans, a drawer full of these cloths is a record of nights spent in the hall.

In kendo (剣道), a tenugui is tied over the head before the padded helmet, the men (面), goes on. It catches sweat and keeps the helmet seated firmly. Dojo and kendo supply shops often print theirs with a single brushed character or a short phrase about practice. Pull off the helmet after a bout and the cloth underneath is soaked through, which is why practitioners keep more than one.

At neighbourhood festivals the same cloth is twisted and knotted around the forehead as a hachimaki (鉢巻), or folded over the head by the people carrying a portable shrine, a mikoshi (神輿). At the Sanja Matsuri (三社祭) in Asakusa (浅草), held in May, each neighbourhood group carries its own pattern. Its members wear that pattern on their cloths and on matching happi (法被) jackets, and onlookers use it to tell one crowd of shoulders from the next.

Patterns that say something

A tenugui is also a small printed surface, and Japanese designers have long used it for puns and for the seasons. The best-known pun is kamawanu (かまわぬ). It shows a sickle (鎌, kama), a ring (輪, wa) and the kana character ぬ (nu), which read together as "I don't mind". The motif was fashionable among Edo-period townspeople and kabuki audiences. A Tokyo tenugui maker later took it as its name. Its shop in Daikanyama (代官山), a short walk from Daikanyama Station on the Tōkyū Tōyoko Line (東急東横線), arranges its shelves by month.

Seasonal patterns follow a set calendar. Plum and cherry blossom come in early spring, hydrangea (ajisai, 紫陽花) and slanting rain in June, goldfish (kingyo, 金魚) and fireworks at the height of summer, and persimmons and maple leaves into autumn. In many homes and small shops a tenugui hangs in a narrow wooden frame by the entrance, or from a bamboo rod, and is changed as the months turn. It is a lighter, cheaper relative of the hanging scroll.

The finest cloths are dyed by chūsen (注染). Dye is poured through stacks of folded cloth, so the colour soaks through both faces and blurs slightly where two shades meet. The workshops are concentrated in places such as Hamamatsu (浜松) in Shizuoka and Sakai (堺) near Osaka. A chūsen tenugui looks almost the same on both sides, while a screen-printed one has a pale reverse. Turning the cloth over in the shop is the quickest way to tell which one you are holding.

手ぬぐいは、拭く布であり、包む布であり、季節を飾る布でもある。

Tenugui wa, fuku nuno de ari, tsutsumu nuno de ari, kisetsu o kazaru nuno de mo aru: a cloth for wiping, a cloth for wrapping and a cloth for showing the season. That middle job is the one gift-givers use. A tenugui folded around a bottle of sake and knotted at the neck is a tidy way to bring a host something, and the cloth itself becomes part of the gift. Because it packs flat and weighs almost nothing, it is also one of the easier pieces of omiyage to carry home.

Buying, washing and carrying one

In Tokyo, the lanes around Sensō-ji (浅草寺) in Asakusa hold several tenugui shops. Asakusa is reached on the Ginza Line (銀座線) or the Toei Asakusa Line (都営浅草線). Among the shops is Fujiya (ふじ屋), known for hand-dyed designs drawn from Edo-period themes. In Kyoto, Eirakuya (永楽屋) has shops in the city centre that reissue patterns from its archives. The craft floors of department stores in both cities carry smaller selections. A simple printed cloth costs about what you would pay for a café lunch, and hand-dyed chūsen work costs a good deal more. Shops list current prices and opening hours on their own websites. Smaller makers close on irregular days, so check before crossing town for one.

For a first cloth, a mid-tone indigo or a simple two-colour pattern is the practical choice. It hides the marks of daily use and fades gently instead of all at once. Fold it in thirds lengthwise and then in half, and it lies flat in a back pocket or the side of a day bag.

The mistake to avoid is the first wash. Chūsen dyes bleed for the first few washes, and a new tenugui put in a hotel machine with white shirts will tint them. Rinse it on its own in cold water in the sink until the water runs nearly clear, then hang it straight to dry, without bleach and away from the tumble dryer. After that it can go in with everything else, and over the following weeks it will soften like the one on the man's head at the sentō.