Kaga Yuzen

Kimono painted like a garden

Kaga Yuzen is known for painterly designs built around realistic flowers and plants. Its calm, refined look reflects the cultured tastes of the wealthy Maeda clan, lords of the Kaga domain, with a samurai dignity under the quiet colours. It is made in Kanazawa in Ishikawa, as kimono cloth, obi and small accessories.

Painted by hand, then fixed with steam

• A design is drawn on white silk in aibana, a blue flower juice that washes out later.
• Fine lines of paste are piped along the outlines to stop colours spreading (itome-nori-oki).
• Colours are painted in by hand.
• After the background is dyed, the cloth is steamed to fix the dye.
• It is washed to remove extra dye and paste.

There is also itaba yuzen, which uses stencils and coloured paste instead of free painting.

An old Kaga dye meets a master

Kaga had its own dye, umezome, already recorded by the mid-15th century, along with other old local techniques known together as okuni-zome. On this base, in the mid-Edo period, Miyazaki Yuzensai, the man said to have started yuzen in Kyoto, taught pictorial pattern dyeing in Kanazawa, where he is said to have spent his last years. See Kyo Yuzen for the Kyoto side of the story.