Japanese textile artist Akihiko Izukura grew up in a family of master silk weavers who created ceremonial kimono and obi for Japanese royalty. But when he started working in the family business as a college student, he found himself "fighting every day" with his father about the direction the family business was taking.

"My father was not trying to catch up with mainstream industry," he said through an interpreter. "He was against mass production. But though my father was off track (from the mainstream) in his approach, I was even more off track. … The more against the mainstream society I go, the more I feel there is deeper meaning."

Taking things to an extreme has worked out well for the Kyoto-born Izukura, 69. Aside from running a successful garment business that produces unique, handwoven fashions sold in high-end stores and galleries in Japan and the United States, he has been a renowned textile artist since the 1970s, with major installations at art and fashion institutes around the world and receiving praise for promoting the notion of sustainability in the fashion industry.

This week, Izukura’s work will be featured at the Academy Art Center at Linekona and the University of Hawaii at Manoa in "Life in Colors," an installation of textile art and garments that showcase his use of a variety of fabric production and dying techniques, all of them in keeping with his environmentally oriented "zero waste" philosophy.

"I make work that’s good for nature. I don’t force it to make it (good) for people," he said. "But while making things good for nature, in turn that makes things good for people."

Izukura is obsessive about using natural substances in the service of art and leaving none of it behind when he’s finished. Working primarily with silk, he not only uses every bit of thread or lint that an individual silkworm produces, he also weaves dead bugs into the fabric itself. Or he saves the carcasses and uses them to decorate pieces of paper or ceramic glazes.

His dyes are made directly from plants and bugs rather than from artificially produced chemicals. In recent years he decided that using an artificial heat source in the dying process would generate carbon dioxide as a waste product, so now he uses only sunlight, soaking the fabrics in large jars he leaves outdoors to steep. He reuses the dye even as it weakens, producing remarkable range and intensity with repeated dyings.

"By using this kind of technique, the process becomes very gentle, tender and soft," he said. "And that actually (makes) the viewer realize everyone has to be gentle and kind to nature as well. It’s a kind of message."

Izukura developed his ideas during his days at Doshisha University and during those arguments with his father.

They made peace when he agreed to work in the family’s Kyoto factory during the day, using modern methods, and on his own at night, when he studied traditional dying methods and began developing new ones, focusing on the use of natural materials.

He began to see nature as having its own "voice" in the process. "It’s not just a voice, but it’s like life," he said. "People have life but nature has life, too, so I wanted to emphasize life."

His affinity for silk extends to the point where he now wears a single silk outfit that he washes by wearing it in the shower. (On a trip to New York, he had to wear an outfit that was slightly damp and dried wrinkled. The city’s fashion mavens were impressed nonetheless.)

"The silkworm is living inside the cocoon for a long time without having any smell, and it doesn’t get dirty," said Izukura, who said he uses silk wall hangings to decorate his house and silk sheets on his bed.

For local audiences he wants to reveal the intricacies of silk production, a process he knows intimately since he raises silkworms. For his installation at UH, he obtained 300 silkworms from a farmer on Hawaii island that he will somehow get to "collaborate" and create two huge cocoons, like bees building a hive.

"Usually they don’t want to listen to me," he said with a laugh.

It won’t be the first time he will use nature to create his textile art, which consists of everything from hangings of traditional kimono shapes to fabric necklaces woven from a single piece of cloth. For one piece he put pieces of silk and wool inside a cylindrical wooden cage, then threw it into a river to let the current toss and turn the contents into a ball of fabric. He then used it in a shawl-like jacket "made by the power of nature," he said.

His installations here include huge fabric tubes created on a special loom he designed that can weave a seamless tube 10 feet high and 164 feet long. One such piece on display at the Academy Art Center stretches from the interior mezzanine to the front lawn.

The idea, he said, is for people to understand "how beautiful textile can be on the inside."

Izukura came to Hawaii for the first time a year ago, at first visiting only Waikiki but on later trips finding inspiration in Hawaii’s mountainous terrain.

"Especially when I go into the mountains, I feel embraced by nature," he said.

While here, Izukura will conduct workshops (the registration deadline has passed) and deliver a free lecture on art and sustainability at UH-Manoa Art Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. He will also host a trunk show of his wearable art, including jackets and scarves, from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday at the Ilikai Hotel & Suites, Suite 2210.