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- Goshun and Gion Nankai decorated kimonos. Government sumptuaiy laws, attempting especially to restrict the display of wealth by everyday townsmen (chonin), encouraged the development of new textile decoration techniques.
One that is particularly important to the kimonos in this exhibition is the paste-resist dyeing technique known as yuzen, after a Kyoto artist-monk fan painter, Miyazaki Yuzen (active late 1600s-early 1700s), who began to decorate garments. The yuzen process combined both old and new traditions and quickly became very popular. Miyazaki Yuzen was known for decorating fans with classical literary themes and yuzen kimono designs are noted for expressing themes from classical Japanese poems and novels and from traditional sayings. The yuzen process is a lengthy one. Outlines of the designs are drawn on the fabric and then a line of starch paste or glue is applied to the drawing using a cloth tube with a metal tip (like a cake decorating tube). Once the paste has dried, dyes of various colours are brushed on within the starch boundaries (preventing bleeding of one colour into another). The fabric is steamed to set the colour dyes and then the starch paste is washed away in cold water (the workman has to stand in waist high cold running water for this part of the process). The background is brush dyed next, once the designs are covered with a protective glue-paste coating with sawdust over it. Once again the fabric is steamed and then rinsed in cold water and then given a final steaming to stretch and smooth the fabric. If further decoration, with embroidery or silver or gold leaf, is to be done, it comes last.
In the early Meiji period, from 1868 into the 1880s, the fascination with the West and a determination to equal its technological achievements almost led to the abandonment by the elite of Japanese traditions including Japanese style clothing. The reaction in the 1890s against such wholesale destruction of Japanese culture did bring back the wearing of the kimono, but primarily by Japanese women. The kimono �came to embody the essence of Japanese tradition� and especially �became synonymous with Japanese femininity� although the kimono had been worn by both sexes and by all classes and ages until the Meiji period. By the end of the 20th century, even women have largely stopped wearing the kimono, except for a few special or ceremonial occasions, such as weddings.
The style of kimono and the way it has been worn during the 20th century is based on the rather stiff and formal 19th century tradition of the samurai class. �Samurai were serious people who did not wear their kimonos frivolously.� In the 20th century, all the nuances of kimono wearing were carefully studied and correct etiquette rules closely followed. The kimono types have been precisely ranked as to formality and style, as follows:
furisode (swinging sleeves):most formal style for a young, unmarried girl; long sleeved (sleeves reaching to calf or ankle length), often brightly coloured or highly decorated
tomesode (clipped sleeves): worn by a married woman or woman over 22 years old; for most formal occasions, the kimono will be black or white, have 5 crests on the shoulders and any other decoration primarily in the area along the hem and lower front edges (tsuma moyo) or concentrated along the hem (suso moyo); for less formal occasions, the tomesode will have 3 crests and may be in other colours with tsuma moyo or suso moyo decoration
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