Kansei Engineering International Journal Vol.11 No.1 pp.19-25 (2012)

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Study on Factors of Favorable Wet Cotton Hand Towels “Oshibori”
Yasuhiro SOETA**,***, Takuma KITAMOTO*, Hiroshi HASEGAWA***and Masao KASUGA**** Faculty of Engineering, Utsunomiya University, 7-1-2 Yoto, Utsunomiya-shi, Tochigi 321-8585, Japan** Sankyo Co. Ltd., 1150-3 Ujiie, Sakura-shi, Tochigi 329-1311, Japan*** Graduate School of Engineering, Utsunomiya University, 7-1-2 Yoto, Utsunomiya-shi, Tochigi 321-8585, Japan
Abstract: In the present study, we evaluated important factors of the feelings of comfort associated with wet cotton hand towels, oroshibori. First, the following adjectives were extracted as words used to evaluate the characteristics of the oshibori: “large,” “pretty,”“comfortable,” “high-grade,” “shapely,” “soft,” “favorite,” “thick,” “clean,” “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,” “safe,” “goodtouch,” and “rare.” We then conducted a subjective evaluation of 25 kinds of oshibori of various sizes and thicknesses. Forty males andtwenty-four females, ranging in age from their twenties to ﬁfties, participated in the experiment. Each subject evaluated the oshibori by
grading them from one to ﬁve based on the extracted descriptive characteristics. Factor analysis was conducted on the experimental
results and the following three factors were extracted; the ﬁrst factor deﬁned as “dignity factor,” the second factor deﬁned as “preference
factor,” and the third factor deﬁned as “touch factor.” The score for dignity increased as the size of the oshibori increased. The score forpreference was high when the size of the oshibori was between 25 cm × 25 cm and 30 cm × 30 cm. These results suggest that subjects
felt high-class if the size of the oshibori was greater than 30 cm × 30 cm, but subjects most preferred oshibori that were between 25 cm
× 25 cm and 30 cm × 30 cm. No notable trend was found between the thickness of oshibori and the three factors. We then analyzed theexperimental data focusing on the following viewpoints; “gender” and “generation.” of the subjects, and discussed how these factors
effected on the feelings of oshibori using the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis H test. The analyzed results show that thefemale subjects tended to evaluate more highly on the evaluation words of “thick,” “moist,” and “heavy,” that the evaluations of “large,”“pretty,” “comfortable,” “high-grade,” “shapely,” “soft,” “favorite,” “thick,” “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,” “safe,” “goodtouch,” and “rare” varied depending on generation.
Keywords: oshibori, hand towel, subjective evaluation

control not only temperatures, sizes, and thicknesses ofoshibori but also the room condition at various temperaturesand humidity, it is too many parameters to perform theexperiments. In this study, therefore, we focused on parameters of sizes and thicknesses of oshibori. We then analyzed
the experimental data focusing on the following viewpoints;“gender” and “generation.” of the subjects and discussed
how these factors effected on the feelings of oshibori.

1. INTRODUCTION
When you come into cafes and restaurants in Japan, youwill be given a glass of water and oshibori. Oshibori is akind of small wet towels to wipe face and hands. Serving
oshibori to guests is one of the long-standing traditions inJapan, and it is rarely seen outside of Japan. While lots ofresearches have been conducted on oshibori over the years,
most of them have investigated the towels from the perspective of cleaning and sanitation [1-3]. Few studies haveassessed the qualitative and sensory characteristics associated with oshibori. Thus, in order to assess oshibori
qualitatively, we ﬁrst conducted a subjective evaluation
using cotton and paper ones [4], because most of oshibori
are made of woven cotton or nonwoven paper. We reported
that cotton oshibori were assessed more favorably thanpaper oshibori in many aspects. As an extension of thework, the present subjective evaluation was conducted to
identify the important factors in determining the feeling of
comfort associated with woven cotton oshibori, including
the various sizes and thicknesses of oshibori that people
prefer. Oshibori are generally used in hot or cold conditions. In this study, we, however, make no mention ofthermal sensation when oshibori are used, because if wemake experiments for the thermal sensation, we have to
Received 2010.12.28
Accepted 2011.05.02

2. EXTRACTION OF EVALUATION WORDS
In this section, we describe a method for extracting
words to evaluate the characteristics of oshibori. First, a
total of 1,189 possible adjectives that could describe oshibori were gathered from past studies on oshibori [1-3] andan adjective dictionary [5]. Next, ten people evaluated todetermine whether or not each adjective was appropriate
for evaluating oshibori using the following three grades (1:applicable, 2: neutral, and 3: not applicable). Based on the
results, we discarded the words whose average scores
exceeded 2.5 points. The 1,189 words were narrowed down
to 221 words that were deemed applicable. These 221
words were then classiﬁed into 60 groups with similar
meaning, and the word with the highest score in each group
was identiﬁed as a representative adjective. Subsequently,
107 people evaluated to determine whether or not the 60

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All Rights Reserved.

Kansei Engineering International Journal Vol.11 No.1

words were appropriate for evaluating oshibori using thethree grade levels to narrow the list to 27 words. Of these
27 words, ones that were not appropriate for the purpose of
the present study, such as words related to smell andconvenience, were excluded, and the following 16 words
were chosen to evaluate oshibori: large, pretty, comfortable, high-grade, shapely, soft, favorite, thick, clean, moist,
luxurious, heavy, strong, safe, good-touch, and rare. Alongwith each of these 16 words, an antonym was chosen to
generate a list of 16 pairs of words to evaluate oshibori.
The 16 pairs of words are listed in Table 1.

the 25 available and wipe their hands to evaluate it. With
regards to how to use the oshibori, although we orderedthem to wipe their hands only, we imposed no restriction
except it. Subjects then scored the selected oshibori on agrade from 1 to 5 (1: lowest; 5: highest) in the 16 categories. The evaluation sheet used in the experiment is shownin Figure 1. Figure 1 shows the evaluation sheet. Aftereach evaluation, the subjects were instructed to sufﬁciently dry their hands using a towel or an electric fan toTable 2: Sizes, color, woven design, yarn count, weaving
density, thicknesses, and weights of cotton oshibori
evaluated in the present study.

3. SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION OF OSHIBORI
We conducted a subjective evaluation experiment using
the semantic differential (SD) method with the 16 words
extracted in the previous section.
3.1 Samples
We used a total of 25 different kinds of cotton oshibori
with ﬁve different sizes and ﬁve different thicknesses. All
samples were pile-woven [7] and unused. In order to remove
dirt and starch that became attached during manufacturing,
all samples were washed once; the level of residual chlorine
was set at less than 100 ppm. The regain of each oshibori
was 2.5 times its relative dry weight [8], and in order toavoid changes in the regain, each sample was wrapped in aﬁlm. The size, color, woven design, yarn count, weaving
density, thickness and weight of each sample type are shownin Table 2. The temperature and humidity of the laboratory
was set at 20 ± 2°C and 60 ± 3% RH, respectively.
3.2 Procedure
Each sample was packed in a vinyl bag and all samples
were prepared for each subject. The subjects were
instructed to randomly choose one oshibori at a time from
Table 1: Words used to evaluate oshibori

Figure 1: Evaluation sheet of the experiment

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Study on Factors of Favorable Wet Cotton Hand Towels “Oshibori”

avoid inﬂuencing the evaluation of the next sample. The
evaluation process was divided into two sessions to avoid
fatigue of the subjects, with a break of at least one hour
between them. Twelve samples were evaluated during theﬁrst part and 13 samples in the second part. One session of
the experiment took less than 30 minutes.

and “shapely,” respectively. In Figure 2(b), , , and 
indicate “thick,” “strong,” and “rare,” respectively. In
Figure 2(c), , , and  indicate “pretty,” “high-grade,”and “luxurious,” respectively. In Figure 2(d), , , and 
indicate “soft,” “clean,” and “good-touch,” respectively.
The error bars represent the standard deviations.
Data suggest that, in terms of “favorite,” “comfortable,”and “shapely,” 25 cm × 25 cm and 30 cm × 30 cm oshibori
were evaluated highly. The general size range for oshibori
is 28 cm × 28 cm to 30 cm × 30 cm, suggesting that familiar sizes were evaluated favorably. It is could be consideredthat the subjects pictured scenes from general restaurants
in their mind. In terms of “thick” and “strong” the tendency
was that the thicker the oshibori, the higher the evaluations“thick” and “strong.” With regards to “rare,” the subjects
tended to view 20 cm × 20 cm and 40 cm × 40 cm oshibori
as rare. As to “pretty,” the smaller the size of the oshibori,
the greater the score. In terms of “high-grade” and “luxurious” the scores for sizes larger than 30 cm × 30 cm werecomparable, and as a result, large, 35 cm × 35 cm or 40 cm
× 40 cm, oshibori are not necessarily viewed as high-gradeor luxurious. This result denotes that the subjects judged“high-grade” and “luxurious” of oshibori based oncommonly-used sizes (28 cm × 28 cm to 30 cm × 30 cm)
and they felt the oshibori larger than 30 cm × 30 cm morehigh-grade and luxurious. For this reason, we believe that
serving oshibori larger than 30 cm × 30 cm to guests is oneof the effective methods to create high-grade and luxurious
atmosphere in restaurants. The scores for “soft,” “clean,”and “good-touch” were mostly comparable because all
samples were unused, made of identical material.

3.3 Subjects
Sixty-four people (males: 40; females: 24; age range:
20–59 years) participated in the experiment. The subjects
were university students, faculties, or clerks who had noexpert knowledge of cotton oshibori. All subjects participated in subjective evaluation tests for cotton oshibori forthe ﬁrst time.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Evaluation scores
The results for the following words that exhibited characteristic trends for the 25 different oshibori (Table 2: C1
to C25) are shown in Figure 2: “favorite,” “comfortable,”“shapely,” “thick,” “strong,” “rare,” “pretty,” “high-grade,”“luxurious,” “soft,” “clean,” and “good-touch.” We
assembled every 3 evaluation words because the tendencies of the evaluation results were similar or opposite. In
Figure 2(a), , , and  indicate “favorite,” “comfortable,”

4.2 Gender differences
Figure 3 shows the evaluation results separated according to gender. The symbols  and  indicate average

Figure 3: Evaluation results on gender. The symbols  and 
represent the results of the male and female subjects,
respectively. The error bars denote the standard
deviations. “*” represent signiﬁcant differences at a levelof 5%. The number of subjects; males: 40, females: 24.

Figure 2: Oshibori evaluation results

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values of male and female subjects, respectively. The error
bars represent the standard deviations. Figure 3 suggests
that, in terms of “comfortable,” “high-grade,” “soft,”“thick,” “clean,” “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,”and “rare,” the evaluated values of the females are relatively higher than those of the males.
We performed the Mann-Whitney U test [9] between
the average values of the male subjects and those of thefemale subjects in each evaluation term using SPSS16.0J(SPSS Japan Inc.). As results, there were signiﬁcantdifferences in terms of “pretty,” “comfortable,” “highgrade,” “shapely,” “soft,” “favorite,” “thick,” “clean,”“moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,” and “rare” at alevel of 5%. These results show that the females tended toevaluate more highly the evaluation words of “comfortable,” “high-grade,” “soft,” “thick,” “clean,” “moist,”“luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,” and “rare” than those of
the males. One of the reasons for these results could beconsidered that the material and woven design of thesamples gave more comfort to the females than themales.
We also focused on the terms of “thick,” “moist, “and“heavy” of which differences of the average scores
between the males and the females were relatively high(≥ 0.25). Figure 4 (a), (b), and (c) shows the evaluation
results separated according to gender on 25 different
oshibori in terms of “thick,” “moist, “and “heavy,” respectively. The symbols  and  indicate average values of themale and the female subjects, respectively. The error bars

represent the standard deviations.
As shown in Figures 4, the female subjects tended toevaluate more highly on the evaluation words of “thick,”“moist,” and “heavy.” One of the reasons is consideredthat the threshold of pressure sensation is different between
males and females. Weinstein reported that the male’s
threshold of pressure sensation was signiﬁcantly higher
than the female’s threshold, i.e., females were more sensitive for pressure sensitivity than males [10]. Also Ushioda
and Nakajima reported that the higher pressure on the skinby ﬁber fabrics, the more increase in soaking sensation[11]. It is, therefore, considered that the female subjects
felt the changes in thickness, weight, and moistness ofoshibori more sensitive than the male subjects in our
experiment.
4.3 Generation differences
Figure 5 shows the evaluation results separated according to generation. The symbols , , , and  indicate theaverage values of the subjects in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and50’s, respectively. The error bars represent the standard
deviations. Figure 5 suggests that, in terms of “pretty,”“comfortable,” “high-grade,” “soft,” “thick,” “luxurious,”“heavy,” “strong,” “safe,” “good-touch,” and “rare,” there
were slight differences in all generation groups. The
evaluated values on the 50’s were relatively higher thanthose of the other groups, and the evaluated values on 40’s
were relatively lower than those of the other groups.
However, the score of “clean” was mostly comparable inall generation groups.
We ﬁrst performed the Kruskal-Wallis H test [9] for the
average values among all generation groups of 20’s, 30’s,
40’s, and 50’s in each evaluation term. As results, there
were signiﬁcant differences in terms of “large,” “pretty,”

Figure 5: Evaluation results on generation. The symbols , , ,and  represent the results of 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s,
respectively. The error bars denote the standard
deviations. “*” represent signiﬁcant differences at alevel of 5%. The number of subjects; 20’s: 27, 30’s: 12,
40’s: 12, 50’s: 13.

Figure 4: Evaluation results on “thick,” “moist,” and “heavy.”
The symbols  and  represent the results of the maleand female subjects, respectively. The error bars denotethe standard deviations.

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Study on Factors of Favorable Wet Cotton Hand Towels “Oshibori”“comfortable,” “high-grade,” “shapely,” “soft,” “favorite,”“thick,” “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,” “safe,”“good-touch,” and “rare” at a level of 5%. It could be thatthe preference for oshibori varies depending on generation.
We next performed the Mann-Whitney U test to clarify
the signiﬁcant differences among the average values ineach generation. As results, there were signiﬁcant differences between the scores of 40’s and 50’s in terms of“large,” “pretty,” “comfortable,” “high-grade,” “shapely,”“soft,” “favorite,” “thick,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” “strong,”“safe,” “good-touch,” and “rare” at a level of 5%.
We here focused on the evaluation results of “highgrade” and “luxurious” because the tendencies of theevaluation results were distinctive. Figure 6 (a), (b) showsthe evaluation results on 25 different oshibori separated
according to generation in terms of “high-grade” and“luxurious,” respectively. The symbols , , , and 
indicate the average values of the scores of 20’s, 30’s,
40’s, and 50’s subjects, respectively. The error bars represent the standard deviations. As shown in Figure 6, the50’s subjects tended to evaluate higher than those of theother groups when the size of oshibori was 35 cm × 35 cm
to 40 cm × 40 cm. However, there was no notabletendency for the difference of the evaluation scores among
generations.

Table 3: Correlation coefﬁcients among all words used toevaluate cotton oshibori

has a strong positive correlation to “luxurious,” “heavy,”“strong,” and “safe.” “Thick” has a strong positive correlation to “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” and “strong.”“Moist” has a strong positive correlation to “heavy” and“strong.” Also, “luxurious” has a strong positive correlation to “heavy,” “strong,” and “safe.” Furthermore, “heavy”
has a positive correlation to “strong.” Therefore, thesubjects associated the size (“large”) and the thickness(“thick”) with high-gradeness (“high-grade”) and luxuriousness (“luxurious”).
On the other hand, “rare” has a strong negative correlation to “favorite” and “shapely.” This suggested that the
subjects did not prefer rareness in oshibori. Also, “pretty”
has a strong negative correlation to “large,” “thick,”“moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” and “strong.”

4.4 Evaluation word correlations
In this section, we discuss the correlation coefﬁcientamong each evaluation word, as shown in Table 3. Strong
positive correlations with coefﬁcients of more than 0.8
were seen among “favorite,” “comfortable,” and “shapely.”“Large” has a strong positive correlation to “high-grade,”“thick,” “luxurious,” “heavy,” and “strong.” “High-grade”

5. FACTOR ANALYSIS
Factor analysis was conducted on the experimental
results using the software SPSS 16.0J. Factors wereextracted using the principal factor method, and the varimax rotation was used for rotating the factor axis. We
extracted three factors with the eigen value > 1, and thenthe cumulative contribution ratio was 60.1%. The factor
matrix after the rotation is shown in Table 4.
Factor analysis of the 16 evaluation words identiﬁed
three factors, and each of these factors was named basedon the associated words as follows: 1) “dignity” with highabsolute factor loadings for “heavy,” “large,” “thick,”

Figure 6: Evaluation results on “high-grade” and “luxurious.”
The symbols , , , and  represent the results of 20’s,
30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, respectively. The error bars denotethe standard deviations.

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Kansei Engineering International Journal Vol.11 No.1

then subjectively evaluated using these 16 extracted words.
Based on the results of the evaluation, correlation andfactor analyses were performed, and then we analyzed theTable 4: Factor matrix using the iterated principal factor
method. Maximum number of iterations was 25
times and convergence criterion for the extraction
was 0.001.

“strong,” “luxurious,” “pretty,” and “rare” ; 2) “preference” with high absolute factor loadings for “shapely,”“favorite,” “high-grade,” “comfortable,” and “safe” ; and3) “touch” with high absolute factor loadings for “goodtouch,” “soft,” “moist,” and “clean.” Factor scores were
calculated for the three extracted factors.
The relationship between dignity and preference factor
scores is shown in Figure 7(a); between dignity and touchfactor scores in Figure 7(b); and between preference andtouch factor scores in Figure 7(c). In each ﬁgure, , , , and  represent 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40-cm square oshibori, respectively.
As shown in Figures 7(a) and (b), dignity factor scores
mostly had positive values when the size of the oshibori
was more than 30 cm × 30 cm, suggesting that people
believe that oshibori larger than 30 cm × 30 cm are of highdignity. As shown in Figures 7(a) and (c), the preference
factor scores were higher for 25 cm × 25 cm or 30 cm × 30
cm oshibori, suggesting that people prefer 25 cm × 25 cm
to 30 cm × 30 cm oshibori. In Figures 7(b) and (c), no
notable tendency is observed for touch factor scores inrelation to oshibori size.
6. CONCLUSIONSIn the present study, numerous adjectives suited forevaluating the characteristics of oshibori were selected,
and the following 16 words were extracted; “large,”“pretty,” “comfortable,” “high-grade,” “shapely,” “soft,”“favorite,” “thick,” “clean,” “moist,” “luxurious,” “heavy,”“strong,” “safe,” “good-touch,” and “rare.” Oshibori were

Figure 7: Relationships among “preference,” “dignity,” and“touch” factors.

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Study on Factors of Favorable Wet Cotton Hand Towels “Oshibori”

Naruse, K. Hamada, K. Hara, N. Minemura, “Encyclopedia of Fiber,” Maruzen, 2002.
8. T. Miyakawa and K. Kawamura, “Bacteriologicalstudy on the safety use of home-prepared “oshibori”,“The journal of Wayo Women’s University, Vol.35,
pp.1-6, 1995.
9. T. Onodera and K. Yamamoto, “SPSS-Output-Pedia:
Base, “ Nakanishiya Shuppan, 2004.
10. Weinstein, S. Intensive and Extensive Aspects of
Tactile Sensitivity as a Function of Body Part, Sex,and Laterality. In D.R. Kenshalo (Ed.), The Skin
Senses (pp.195-222). Springﬁeld, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1968.
11. H. Ushioda, T. Nakajima, “Sensory Evaluation of
Soaking Sense by Using Natural Fiber Fabrics,”
Journal of the Japan Research Association for textile
end-uses 36 (1), pp.44-52, 1995-01-25.

experimental data focusing on the following viewpoints;“gender” and “generation” of the subjects. We furthermore
discussed how these factors effected on the feelings ofoshibori and the following results were obtained:- The subjects viewed the size as an indicator for highgrade and luxurious oshibori.
- The subjects did not prefer rareness in oshibori.
- The important characteristics of oshibori were classiﬁed
into preference, dignity, and touch factors.
- The scores of the dignity factor tended to be high formore than 30 cm × 30 cm oshibori.
- The scores of the preference factor tended to be high for
25 cm × 25 cm to 30 cm × 30 cm oshibori.
-The female subjects tended to evaluate more highly on
the evaluation words of “thick,” “moist,” and “heavy.”
These results suggest that people perceive more than 30
cm × 30 cm oshibori as high-grade and luxurious oshibori,
but prefer 25 cm × 25 cm to 30 cm × 30 cm oshibori, andsuggest that the female subjects felt the changes in thickness, weight, and moistness of oshibori more sensitive
than the male subjects.

Yasuhiro SOETA
Yasuhiro Soeta is a doctoral student at the Graduate
School of Engineering, Utsunomiya University. He
graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Josai
University in 1996. He is now also a director ofmanagement planning department of Sankyo Co.,
Ltd, after he joined his company in 1998. Currently,
his research interests include Kansei evaluation of hand towels and its
application. He is a member of the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering.

REFERENCES
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Vol.7, pp.45-51, 1972.
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K. Honda, T. Kanoh, and I. Mizoguchi, “Hygienic
study on lease OSHIBORI,” Japanese Journal of Public
Health, Vol.32, No.6, pp.275-286, 1985.
3. R. Juichi and T. Tabata, “Antimicrobial effect of“oshibori” containing essential oil,” Studies in
Humanities and Science, Kobe Women’s JuniorCollege, Vol.11, pp.61-66, 2000.
4. Y. Soeta, T. Kitamoto, H. Hasegawa, and M. Kasuga:
Subjective evaluation of comfortableness of wet
cotton and paper hand towels “oshibori”, Proc. ofInternational Workshop on Advanced Image Technology 2008 (IWAIT2008), p.154, 2008.
5. Y. Tobita and H. Asada, “Dictionary of Present-day
Adjective Usage,” Tokyodo, 1991.
6. Y. Soeta, R. Ando, T. Kitamoto, H. Hasegawa, and M.
Kasuga, “Study on comfortable elements of wet
cotton hand towels “oshibori”, International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research2010 (KEER2010).
7. T. Hongu, T. Kikutani, M. Takatera, H. Takahashi, N.

Takuma KITAMOTO
Takuma Kitamoto is currently a technical staff
member at the Faculty of Engineering, Utsunomiya
University. He graduated from the Faculty of Engineering at Utsunomiya University in 2002. His
research interests include statistical data analysis
and Kansei information processing.
Hiroshi HASEGAWA
Hiroshi Hasegawa is an associate professor at theGraduate School of Engineering, Utsunomiya
University. He received a Dr. Eng. from the University of Electro-Communications in 1994. His
research interests include acoustical measurements,
auditory-visual interactions, digital signal processing, and Kansei information processing. He is a member of the Japan
Society of Kansei Engineering.
Masao KASUGA
Masao Kasuga received the M.E. and D.E. degrees
in electrical engineering from Nagoya University in1971 and 1983, respectively. Since 1995 he has
been the professor of Utsunomiya University, andwas assigned to Research Division of Frontier
Systems of Graduate School in 2008. His researchinterests are in digital signal processing of audio and images, Kansei
Engineering, and assistive technology. Dr. Kasuga is a member of JSKE,HIS and IIITE.

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