Founded by the fan painter Yùzen Miyazaki, its origins date back to the Edo era, in the 17th century. His accessories being very popular, he decided to answer a particular demand: to paint on a kimono. The success was immediate and the Yùzen style, with its variety of colours and curves representing plants, animals and landscapes, quickly spread. When he moved to the feudal domain of Kaga for a commission, a local aesthetic developed in turn. Today, there are three currents; those of Kyoto, Kaga and Edo, which are distinguished by their characteristic elegance.
The techniques used to prepare and perfect the drawing stages are attributed to the artist, but there is no documentation of this. Miyazaki was the forerunner of this craft, but he is said to have only initiated an aesthetic corpus in kimono designs. Later, in order to improve detail, craftsmen introduced wax to delineate areas of paint to avoid ink smudges and to make the designs sharper. In the Meiji era, Jisuke Hiroshi introduced block printing, which streamlined the manufacturing process. By using primers and chemical dyes, several steps are eliminated and the colour palette is multiplied. Thus, many kimono dyeing factories appeared and the Yùzen style was democratised. Today, stencils belong to the techniques of this craft as well as brush drawing.