Kimono, titled 'Green Waves' by Moriguchi Kunihiko (b.1941), plain weave silk with a freehand resist-dyed (yuzen) pattern, Kyoto, 1973

Kimono of tsumugi (plain weave pongee silk) with a freehand resist-dyed (yuzen) pattern of green waves. The number of waves in each square decreases as one moves from bottom to top and from left to right. This is combined with tonal grading, from dark green at the bottom to mid-green at the top. The garment is lined with speckled (makinori) orange and white silk.
The maker's mark is on a panel sewn inside the left sleeve,.

Purchased. Registered File number 1990/2069.

The following text is adapted from Faulkner, Rupert, Japanese Studio Crafts: Tradition and the Avant-Garde, London: Laurence King Publishing, 1995. NAL Bibliographic Ref..No.: 58.DD.517:
‘The contrast between the designs of the Kyoto-based Moriguchi Kako (1909 -; appointed Living National Treasure in 1967) and his son Moriguchi Kunihiko, who was responsible for this kimono, says much about the diversity of interests informing the work of contemporary Japanese yuzen artists. Kako’s classicising designs, often executed in an expansive painterly style, are based directly on the sketches of nature that he regularly goes out to draw. The titles of Kunihiko’s highly innovative and equally arresting kimono reflect a similarly deep-rooted concern with the natural world. His designs are arrived at not through direct observation of nature, however, but through a process of abstraction that involves taking a single stylised motif and subjecting it to a series of mathematically determined transformations. In the case of this work it can be seen how the number of waves in each square decreases as one moves from bottom to top and from left to right. This is combined with tonal grading from dark green at the bottom to mid-green at the top. An important feature of both artists’ work is the way in which they create designs which are effective not only when the kimono is displayed but, more importantly, when it is worn.
The techniques of yuzen-dyeing are said to have been developed by the Kyoto fan painter Miyazaki Yuzen in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as a way of transferring his popular painted designs onto fabric. While mechanised means of achieving the effects of yuzen-dyeing have been in use since the late nineteenth century, the Moriguchis have been rigorous in adhering to traditional procedures. With the kimono temporarily assembled the design is drawn onto the white silk fabric with pale blue tracing liquid (aobana). The kimono is then unpicked and the individual panels of cloth are stretched onto bamboo frames. Using a fine-nozzled applicator resist rice paste is painstakingly squeezed out along the lines of the drawing. The areas inside the resisted outlines are sized with soya bean extract (gojiru) before dyes and pigments are brushed on to build up the pictorial motifs. The colours are fixed by steaming.
When the background is to be dyed the coloured motifs are then covered over with resist past. Sizing liquid followed by one or more background colours are brushed on. Once the dyeing has been completed the panels of cloth are removed from their bamboo frames so that the resist paste can be brushed off in running water. They are then steamed and straightened in readiness for being made up into the finished kimono.
Kunihiko joined his fathers' workshop in 1967 after studying Japanese style painting at Kyoto City University of Arts and then spending three years at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. His decision to become a yuzen artist represented a boost to the traditional textiles world no less significant than the appearance of figures like Shimura Fukumi (1924-; appointed Living National Treasure in 1990 [see FE.11-1989]) and Munehiro Rikizo (1914-89); appointed Living National Treasure in 1982) a generation earlier. The strength of his commitment to make the yuzen tradition relevant to the late twentieth century is reflected in his view that he would prefer that the kimono should die out altogether than see it enslaved to the past or to purely commercial considerations.’

Moriguchi Kunihiko, who trained as a graphic designer in Paris, creates kimono patterns on paper with mathematical precision. He then expertly applies these onto the textile surface using the freehand paste-resist dyeing (yūzen) technique. Here waves decrease in number across the garment from bottom to top and left to right. This is combined with tonal grading from dark to mid-green. Moriguchi was appointed a Living National Treasure in 2007.

FE.420:1-1992