Kimono with wave design, Tokyo yuzen

Yuzen refers to a resist dyeing method using paste, and in particular hand-painted paste-resist, whereby the patterns are outlined with thin thread-like lines of paste and then these contours colored in by hand. The technique, development centered in Kyoto during the mid-Edo Genroku era (1688-1704), is said to have been brought to the Asakusa, Nihonbashi, and Kanda areas of Edo (present-day Tokyo) by dyers attached to certain daimyo in the early 1800s. Although, however, Tokyo was the main consumption area for Yuzen kimonos, it was not actively produced there until the modern era.