Japan’s first name-woven towel in 1950, the world’s first printed towel in 1955. Nearly ninety years on, UCHINO makes towels, robes, sleepwear and everyday wear from the same cotton — spun finer and woven denser than it needs to be, because you touch these things every day.
Towels
Robes & Sleepwear
Apparel
Baby & Kids
Home & Living
Embroidery
Every towel, robe and baby piece can be embroidered to order — a name, initials or a date, worked into the flat band at the hem. It is what turns a towel into the one that gets kept.
One from each of our towel lines — a different yarn and weave in every case, so they dry differently in the hand. Shop all bath towels.
The limit of yarn and weave
The finest yarn a towel can be made from, woven as densely as the loom allows.
Yarn 140-count single — about one-seventh the thickness of ordinary towel cotton
Weave roughly six times the usual density, in an extra-long pile
A loose twist keeps a little crispness inside the softness. Presented in a paulownia box.
Ten years apart
Left: a Shiawase towel today. Right: a customer’s, after ten years of use and washing. Drag to compare.
The things people ask us before their first order.
It comes down to the yarn, and how much of it goes in.
An ordinary cotton towel is made from ordinary towel yarn. Shiawase is spun at 100 count — about a fifth the thickness — and Shiho at 140 count, roughly a seventh, which is the limit of what a towel can be woven from. Finer yarn means more threads in the same space: Shiho is woven at about six times the usual density.
That changes three things you can feel. It takes up water faster — laid on water, Shiawase and Super Marshmallow begin to sink in under a second, where an ordinary towel sits on the surface. It sheds far less: Beauty Skincare leaves under a tenth as much lint in the wash. And it keeps its softness longer, because long, well-made pile holds its shape through washing instead of matting down.
All of these are UCHINO's own measurements against a standard cotton towel.
Finer yarn costs more to buy and more to weave — 100-count cotton needs a stable supply of long-staple fibre, slower looms and more handling, and a good deal of it is lost along the way. Weaving at six times the density simply uses more cotton per towel.
UCHINO has been making textiles since 1937 and holds patents on several of these weaves. The trade-off is that a towel like this outlasts several cheap ones, and feels better every day in between.
Wash separately for the first few washes — a new towel sheds, and dark colours can cloud the water. Skip fabric softener at the start: it coats the pile and costs you absorbency. Avoid chlorine bleach on coloured pieces. Full instructions sit on every product page.
Yes. Towels, robes, sleepwear and baby pieces can be embroidered with a name, initials or a date — $10 a piece. Add the piece to your cart, then press Add embroidery under it. Our apparel and the soft toys cannot be embroidered. UCHINO wove the first name-embroidered towel in Japan in 1950. How embroidery works.
We have two stores in Australia, where you can handle the towels before you buy — the difference between 100-count and an ordinary towel is easier to feel than to read about.
