Lorax, Wow! I admire your commitment! Basho-fu is beautiful stuff, and I wish I could make it. But the expense, time and skill necessary all seem a bit overwhelming to me. In Japan this art was only recently revived, but it may well die out again, since very few younger people are interested in it (the people who revived it are in their 80s and 90s). I would love to have clothes made out of basho-fu. It reminds me a lot of hemp. The best pair of jeans I ever had was made out of hemp. In Japan they die the strands before weaving, so the patterns are rather simple. They use the cloth here to make kimono and luxury goods such as handbags, hats etc. I said to the lady in Okinoerabu that a pair of jeans made out of basho-fu would be really comfortable, but I think I offended her by suggesting that! I was surprised to hear that you can make good fibre out of cavendish and M.basjoo. Perhaps some mainland Japanese did also try doing that with M.basjoo - in which case it would not be totally incorrect to say that M.basjoo is a Japanese fibre banana after all!! ("a" rather than "the" though!).
Michael, that article you refer to is inaccurate in many places. For a start the Ryukyus do not stop at Okinawa, a large part of them belong to Kagoshima. There are not two "kinds" of bananas in Japan now or historically - there are at least three (for food, for fibre, and for ornamental use), and arguably more (wind break, hedgerow, etc). "Shima banana" is generally used to refer to a specific cultivar that was introduced from Hawaii via the Ogasawara islands 100 years or more ago. Some people (such as this writer) use shima banana (= "island banana") to refer to any banana grown on the southern islands, which is a rather meaningless usage. Musa ryukyuensis is a misspelling of Musa liukiuensis, which is a synonym for M. balbisiana (see
Musa home, scroll right down the page. This website is where I go to to sort out names!)