Tokyo Tegaki Yuzen

Yuzen with an Edo accent

Yuzen is the art of painting pictures onto kimono silk. Tokyo's hand-painted version keeps the number of colours low, for designs that look quiet at first glance yet carry bright tones and fresh ideas. It is made across the 23 wards of Tokyo, on kimono cloth, haori jackets and obi.

Three ways to keep dye out

Every Tokyo yuzen technique is a resist method: something blocks the dye so the design stays clean. There are three main types:

• Itome yuzen, the most common today, where fine lines of paste leave a white, thread-like outline after dyeing.
• Rokechi, which uses wax as the resist.
• Musen-gaki, painted without outlines.

Brought east, then made rebellious

In the mid-Edo period, goods from Kyoto and Osaka poured into Edo, and dyers retained by the daimyo moved there too, bringing their techniques. As merchants gained economic power, their taste for iki, an understated, worldly chic, shaped the craft, and pattern painters developed hand-painted yuzen. The workshops grew along the Sumida and Kanda rivers, where cloth was rinsed in the river until the early Showa period. Compare it with Kyo Yuzen to see the Kyoto roots.