# Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics

> Japanese folk-craft graphic design made by cutting paper stencils and dyeing through a rice-paste resist. Figures, tools, houses, plants and kana or kanji are cut as one stencil, so letters and pictures share the same soft, hand-cut edge and sit as flat fields of earth, indigo and bingata red on undyed cloth or washi. Serizawa used it for calendars, book covers, screens and picture books, setting small everyday scenes in grids of panels or repeating them across the cloth.

- Period: 1927–present
- Where: East Asia
- Origin: Tokyo and Shizuoka. Keisuke Serizawa (1895–1984) joined Yanagi Sōetsu's mingei (folk-craft) movement in 1927, first saw Okinawan bingata in 1928 and went to Okinawa to learn its technique in 1939. He applied stencil and rice-paste resist dyeing to cloth, screens, book covers and, from 1945, annual calendars on handmade washi. In 1956 he was named a Living National Treasure for kataezome (型絵染), a term coined for the designation meaning that one artist designs, cuts the stencils and dyes. Pupils such as Samiro Yunoki (1922–2024) carried the work on.
- Branch: Traditions & vernacular
- Also known as: Kataezome (型絵染), Serizawa style, Mingei stencil dyeing, Katazome calendars
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/serizawa-katazome/

## Use it with care

Katazome and Okinawan bingata are living crafts: bingata is an Okinawan (Ryukyuan) tradition, carried on by dye houses such as the Shiroma family, and is protected as an intangible cultural property, so credit Okinawa and its makers when borrowing its colours and motifs, and do not sell printed or generated imitations as hand-dyed katazome or bingata. Mainland mingei collecting of Okinawan and Korean crafts in the 1930s and 1940s is now read critically against Japan's colonial rule over Korea and its treatment of annexed Okinawa, which is one more reason to name Okinawan makers rather than present bingata as Serizawa's invention. Serizawa's and Yunoki's designs are authored works held by their museums: work in the manner rather than copying a calendar or screen. His Buddhist subjects, such as the 1939 scroll of the priest Hōnen, are devotional images, not decoration. Kana and kanji must be real, correct text checked by a fluent reader, never pseudo-script used as texture.

## How it works

- Cut every shape, letters included, as a paper stencil, and keep the soft, slightly rounded edge the knife leaves, with a visible bridge where the stencil needs one.
- Fill each shape with one flat dye colour, with no shading or modelling, and let the undyed cloth or paper show between them.
- Draw letters as pictures: cut kana, kanji and numerals as bold decorative shapes in the same hand as the image.
- Take motifs from everyday working life, such as tools, crafts, houses, plants and people at work, and simplify them into friendly figures.
- Set the motifs in a grid of framed panels for a calendar, screen or book, or repeat them across the whole cloth.
- Keep to a few warm earth colours and indigo, with bingata red or yellow as an accent, or to a single dye on undyed cloth.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Framed panels](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/framed-panels/) (defining)
- [All-over field](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/all-over-field/) (characteristic)
- [Central symmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/central-symmetry/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Measured density](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/measured-density/) (characteristic)
- [Repetition & rhythm](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/repetition-and-rhythm/) (characteristic)
- [Sequential narrative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/sequential-narrative/) (characteristic)
- [Flat hierarchy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-hierarchy/) (occasional)
- [Generous white space](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/generous-white-space/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Hand-lettering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-lettering/) (defining)
- [Ornamented display](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ornamented-display/) (characteristic)
- [Stencil](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stencil/) (occasional)
- [Type as image](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/type-as-image/) (occasional)
- [Rotated & vertical setting](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rotated-and-vertical-setting/) (occasional)
- [Brush & pen calligraphy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/brush-and-pen-calligraphy/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Earth & mineral](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/earth-and-mineral/) (defining)
- [Flat fields](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/) (defining)
- [Limited spot colours](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/limited-spot-colours/) (characteristic)
- [Light ground](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/light-ground/) (characteristic)
- [Full polychrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-polychrome/) (occasional)
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Stylised figuration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/stylised-figuration/) (defining)
- [Rounded & pill](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rounded-and-pill/) (characteristic)
- [Biomorphic curves](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/biomorphic-curves/) (characteristic)
- [Pictogram](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pictogram/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (characteristic)
- [Paper & letterpress bite](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/paper-and-letterpress-bite/) (characteristic)

### Ornament
- [Folk & sacred symbols](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/folk-and-sacred-symbols/) (characteristic)
- [Borders & frames](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/borders-and-frames/) (characteristic)
- [Floral & vegetal](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/floral-and-vegetal/) (characteristic)
- [Restrained accents](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/restrained-accents/) (occasional)

### Imagery
- [Pattern & repeat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pattern-and-repeat/) (defining)
- [Line illustration](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/line-illustration/) (occasional)
- [Diagram & data](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/diagram-and-data/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Textile & craft](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/textile-and-craft/) (defining)
- [Hand-painted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hand-painted/) (characteristic)
- [Pen, brush & ink](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pen-brush-and-ink/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Warm & approachable](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/warm-and-approachable/) (defining)
- [Communal & popular](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/communal-and-popular/) (characteristic)
- [Calm & contemplative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/calm-and-contemplative/) (characteristic)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (occasional)
- [Spiritual & sacred](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/spiritual-and-sacred/) (occasional)

Avoids: Straight photography, Gradients, Fluorescent & neon, Illusion of depth, Naturalistic depiction, Painterly brushwork, Gloss & highlights, Grotesque & neo-grotesque

Palette: #efe6d2, #1f3a5f, #b5432a, #d9a635, #2b2622, #6b7a3a

Typefaces: Hand-cut stencil kana and kanji, dyed together with the picture, for calendar month names, book titles and inscriptions, Moji-e (文字絵), letters built from figures and objects, collected in Serizawa Keisuke no moji-e, san (1997, edited by Serizawa Chōsuke and Sugiura Kōhei), Bold stencil-cut numerals in the grids of the annual calendars

Known for: Keisuke Serizawa, annual stencil-dyed calendars on handmade washi, from 1945; Keisuke Serizawa, covers of the journal Kōgei (工藝), Japanese-bound with stencil-dyed cloth covers, 120 issues from 1931; Keisuke Serizawa, book designs for most of Yanagi Sōetsu's writings; Keisuke Serizawa, six-fold screen showing the stages of making paper, stencil-resist dyeing on silk, about 1938 (Victoria and Albert Museum); Keisuke Serizawa, six-fold screen with a map of Okinawa and round vignettes of Okinawan life and crafts, stencilled resist-dyed silk in the bingata technique, about 1940 (Victoria and Albert Museum); Keisuke Serizawa, Shinpan Ehon Don Kihōte (new edition of the Don Quixote picture book, stencil-dyed), limited edition, Gohachi (吾八), 1976; Shizuoka City Serizawa Keisuke Art Museum (opened 1981) and the Serizawa Keisuke Museum of Art and Craft, Tohoku Fukushi University, Sendai: collections of his calendars, screens, noren and book designs; Samiro Yunoki, katazome noren, kimono, prints and picture books, made after studying katazome with Serizawa

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Alike in its design choices: [Chinese Paper-Cut (Jianzhi)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/chinese-paper-cut.md) (c. 500–present), 71% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Mithila (Madhubani) Painting](https://stylogeny.com/styles/mithila-painting.md) (c. 1350–present), 70% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Kanoon Children's Book Illustration (Iran, 1965 to 1979)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/kanoon-childrens-illustration.md) (1965–1979), 69% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/gond-painting.md) (1981–present), 67% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/nordic-national-romanticism.md) (1880–1922), 67% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [minä perhonen (Hand-Drawn Textile Graphics, Akira Minagawa)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/mina-perhonen.md) (1995–present), 66% alike

## Sources

- Wikipedia (ja), 芹沢銈介: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/芹沢銈介
- Wikipedia (en), Keisuke Serizawa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keisuke_Serizawa
- Wikipedia (en), Katazome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katazome
- Wikipedia (en), Bingata: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingata
- Wikipedia (en), Samiro Yunoki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samiro_Yunoki
- Wikipedia (en), Mingei (Critiques): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mingei
- Victoria and Albert Museum, six-fold screen of papermaking by Serizawa Keisuke, ca. 1938: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O16161/
- Victoria and Albert Museum, six-fold screen with a map of Okinawa by Serizawa Keisuke, ca. 1940: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O24291/
- Victoria and Albert Museum, hanging scroll of the priest Hōnen by Serizawa Keisuke, 1939: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O25682/

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Serizawa Katazome and Mingei Stencil-Dye Graphics”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/serizawa-katazome/