Abstract
“Shittori” in Japanese is a sensation perceived when we manipulate a fabric. We defined “shittori” sensation was similar to that human′s skin could maintain adequate moisture. The stronger “shittori” sensation for fabrics was accompanied with either the warm or soft. The effective characteristic values to understand “shittori” feeling of fabrics were qmax(the maximum value of heat flux), MIU(mean coefficient of friction), 2HG(hysteresis of shear force at 0.5 degree of shear angle), G(shear stiffness) and WC(compression energy).
We think that it is important to accomplish a comparative study of hand evaluation of “shittori” characteristic for fabrics between Japanese and foreigner. As the first step in our analysis, we examined the English expression for the Japanese “shittori” sensation of fabric. In Hong Kong, we found “baby′s skin” was the preferred descriptor for hand evaluation of Japanese “shittori”. Fifteen words which describe the sense of “shittori” and “baby′s skin” were presented for Japanese subjects. Among those words, “Warmth”, “Smoothness”, “Comfort”, “Slippery”, “Puni-Puni”, “Sensitive”, “White”, “Red” and “Transparence” were common description for both “shittori” and “baby′s skin”. Then the “shittori” feeling for fabrics was evaluated by manipulating fabrics according to the Kendall′s rank method, the Normalized-Rank Approach. “Shittori” and “baby′s skin” were words of similar meaning.
