Richly brocaded garments known as karaori, literally "Chinese weaving," are reserved for women's roles in Japanese No_ dramas. Although they resemble embroidery, they are actually woven by a difficult technique of floating weft threads of glossed silk to form a dense, colorful pattern against a solid ground. In this case, grape vines and autumn grasses intertwine with a bamboo lattice pattern. The difficult and time-consuming nature of karaori weaving made these garments the rarest and most expensive of all.