Minpaku’s Ukrainian Embroidery and Clothing Arrived During the Soviet Era

The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku), located in Expo Commemoration Park in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, publishes basic information on the specimens it holds online as the “Specimen Catalog Database.” Searching this database with the keyword “Ukraine” in September 2026 turns up 120 items — embroidered shirts, sashes, scarves, towels, pillowcases, aprons. Most are textiles.

For 119 of the 120 items, the region field reads “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Ukraine.” According to the database’s explanation, the country and region names in the region field are, in principle, the names current at the time Minpaku received the item.

When Did the 120 Items Arrive?

Looking at the fiscal year of acquisition item by item, the 120 items fall into four groups.

FY1981, FY1989, and FY1990 all predate Ukraine’s independence in 1991. This means the core of the collection is a group of textiles and clothing that arrived together during the Soviet era. Among the 104 items from FY1981, alongside the embroidered clothing and textiles, are a small number of tools, such as hand axes, feed bags, and holy-water vessels.

Two Languages Side by Side in the “Local Name” Field

The clothing items are also registered in another Minpaku database, the “Clothing and Accessories Database,” which has a “local name” field. Looking at the FY1981 items, for example, a women’s scarf (H0088440) is recorded as “Хустка – платок женский,” a women’s sash (H0088427) as “Попружка – пояс женский,” and a men’s sash (H0088494) as “Окрайка – пояс мужской,” with the language field in each case listed as “Russian.” The part after the hyphen is a Russian-language description meaning “women’s scarf,” “women’s sash,” and “men’s sash,” respectively.

One item registered as a women’s apron (H0088503) has the local name “Горбатка – юбка женская.” The word after the hyphen is Russian for “women’s skirt.” As for the word before it, the “Dress” entry of the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), describes a “rectangular wraparound woven skirt (horbatka)” worn by women in the Podillia region. In Minpaku’s record, this item’s form is listed as a “wrap skirt,” and its size is a 164 × 93 cm rectangle of striped fabric in red, black, and other colors.

Where, from whom, and how these items were collected is not stated in the publicly available database.

Towels and Icons

The FY1981 group includes 9 towels. Three of them have the specimen name “towel for icons,” and one is a “towel (for weddings).” The IEU’s “Embroidery” entry (first appearing in Volume 1 of the print encyclopedia, published in 1984) states that embroidered rushnyky (ritual towels) were used in folk rites, especially weddings and the decoration of icons. The same entry divides Ukrainian embroidery patterns into three groups: the strict geometric patterns that survive in the northern Polissia region and the Hutsul region of the Carpathian Mountains; the floral patterns common in the central and eastern regions along the Dnipro River; and patterns depicting flowers geometrically, found in Volyn, central Halychyna, the Poltava region, and elsewhere.

Which specific region Minpaku’s items are from cannot be determined from the catalog. Regional differences in embroidery are covered in our article on vyshyvanka.

Pysanky Are Not in the Catalog

As of September 2026, pysanky, another well-known Ukrainian craft, are not among the items whose region or ethnic group in this catalog is listed as “Ukraine.” Minpaku’s catalog has 515 items with the specimen name “decorative egg for Easter,” of which 400 are from the Moldova region of Romania, with the rest from the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, and others. The 3 items whose region is “USSR” have “Russia” listed in the ethnic group field.

Ukraine-Related Items Outside the Catalog Search

Minpaku also has a “Specimen Detailed Information Database” that records detailed information for each item. Searching this one with “Ukraine” turns up 4 items. Three of these were not among the 120 items found by searching “Ukraine” in the catalog.

• A bandura (H0281515, acquired FY2018) — In the detailed information, the place of use is “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Republic of Ukraina (estimated)” and the place of manufacture is “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (estimated),” with “MADE IN USSR” handwritten on the back of the instrument. It is one item from the collection of Ohnishi Naoaki (1923–2004), who collected musical instruments. In the catalog, however, this instrument’s region field reads “Russian Federation (estimated) <manufacture>.” The same item is recorded under different country names in the two databases.
• A medal given to responders to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant accident (H0275254, acquired FY2013) — Collected in 2013 in Astana, Kazakhstan, with the place of use listed as “Ukraine,” the ethnic group of use as “Kazakh,” and the purpose as “a medal given, in the Soviet era, to those involved in relief efforts for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.” The catalog’s region field reads “Republic of Kazakhstan.”
• A calendar (H0280019) — A business-card-sized calendar collected in the United States on April 8, 2016, with the ethnic group of use listed as “Ukrainian immigrants (estimated),” place of manufacture Odesa, and year of manufacture 2004. The back has a list of emergency phone numbers, written in Ukrainian.
• A doll (H0233843, acquired FY2005) — The only item among the catalog’s 120 acquired after independence, one item from the collection of Tanaka Chiyo. The detailed information lists the place of use as “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Republic of Ukraine,” and the purpose field states “wearing a blue apron.”

Which items turn up depends on which word is used and which database is searched. Searching the catalog for “Ukraine” alone does not lead to Ukraine-related items recorded under the Russian Federation or Kazakhstan.

Exhibitions and Research

Minpaku’s “Exhibition Information Database” holds records of its permanent exhibition, special exhibitions, planned exhibitions, collection displays, and new-acquisition displays. As of September 2026, searching “Ukraine” turns up no matching exhibitions. The specimen catalog page itself also notes that not all the items it holds are on display. Whether a particular item can actually be viewed needs to be confirmed directly with Minpaku.

There has been activity on the research side. On February 24, 2023, a special seminar, “The Development of Ukrainian Culture Since the Maidan Revolution,” was held at Ritsumeikan University’s Kinugasa Campus, co-hosted by the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center and Minpaku’s East Eurasian Studies base, at which Minpaku’s Akao Mitsuharu reported on Ukrainian hip-hop and folk culture amid the war with Russia. Akao also wrote, in the June 2023 issue of Gekkan Minpaku, about the ongoing Jewish pilgrimage to the town of Uman (spelled “Umani” in the magazine), located between Kyiv and Odesa.

The textiles in the storeroom entered the museum in 1981 as ethnographic materials from a region of the Soviet Union. The region names and language recorded at that time still remain in the database today. The record itself has become a document that conveys how these items were seen, and in what era.