Kaga-Yuzen Kimono Center

This guide to the Kaga-Yuzen Kimono Center in Kanazawa opens with an artisan piping rice-flour paste along the outlines of a half-painted silk kimono, the same sticky rice used for New Year mochi put to a different job. From there it traces Kaga Yuzen dyeing back roughly five hundred years, to a Kyoto fan painter named Miyazaki Yuzen who left his name on the technique in the early 1700s, and through the roughly fifteen steps folded into one craft. You'll also hear why artisans deliberately paint small holes into painted leaves, a flaw called mushi kui, or insect eaten. Watch the demonstration table to see the outlining stage before any color goes on.