Chusen (注染, "poured dyeing") is a traditional Japanese resist hand-dyeing technique in which dye is poured through layers of folded cotton cloth, producing soft-edged, fully penetrated patterns. It is the classic method for decorating tenugui hand towels and yukata fabric.
How it works
A length of cloth is folded back and forth into a stack of aligned layers. A craftsperson applies a starch-and-rice-bran resist paste through a stencil onto the areas that should stay undyed, repeating it on every layer so the design lines up throughout the pile. The stack is then placed over a vacuum table, and liquid dye is poured by hand directly onto the cloth. Suction draws the dye down through all the layers at once, while the paste blocks it from the resisted areas. Multiple colours can be added by walling off sections with extra resist and pouring each colour separately.
Why colour appears on both sides
Because the dye is poured and drawn right through the full thickness of the fabric rather than printed onto one surface, every fibre is saturated. The result is a pattern that reads with the same strength on the front and the back, with no pale reverse side. This two-sided clarity is a hallmark of genuine chusen work and a practical advantage for tenugui, which are used and seen from either face. The hand-poured process also gives gentle gradations and soft, slightly irregular edges that machine printing cannot easily reproduce.
Related terms
- Tenugui are the flat-woven cotton hand towels most often dyed by chusen.
- Piece-dyeing also colours finished cloth, but without chusen's resist patterning.