Around the years of Genroku in the Edo era, the technique of the Yuzen-zome dyeing, which is characterized as paste being placed to prevent dyeing and hand-drawn picture, became popular.

It is said that the technique was the original idea of Miyazaki Yuzen who was a resident of Kyoto.

His year of birth and age at death are unknown.

Furthermore, it is not his own original idea.

The epoch-making method of expressing the dyeing of "kosode" kimono made by progress of technology of those days was called the"Yuzen."

In those days, some collections of designs of the"Yuzen" were published.

According to those existing data, the oldest one started by the publishment of the collection titled "Mi-hinakata (=the model)" in the sixth year of Kanbun time, and the newest one was finished around the years of Bunsei time in the last days of Tokugawa shogunate.

There are 100 or more sorts of model collections, which were published in those150 years, are existing even now.

The model is expressed imaginatively, not by the reduction of the fixed rate of the original measurements but by the atmosphere of the original drawings.

(At present, any articles left by the departed of the same clothes as the model collections do not exist.)

The kimono in the photo is a "kosode" from one of the collections; it has the patterns of "hagi (= bushclover)", "kikyo (= Chinese bellflower)", "susuki (=Japanese pampas grass), and the Chinese character of "aki (=autumn)".

The "obi" belt is "meibutsu-kireji (=famous fragment cloth)" with the "kanto (=pattern from Kuangtung, China)" pattern; it is fastened in "Kichiya-musubi (=fastening)" style which was in fashion those days. ( Kamimura Kichiya was a kabuki actor.)

The hair is fixed in the "sekirei-zuto (=wagtail portion)" style in which the "tabo", the portion which stretched back and came out by the Japanese coiffure, is extended on the back.