Ukiyo-e

Clockwise from top left: Beauty Looking Back, Moronobu, late-17th century Otani Oniji II, Sharaku, 1794 Woman wiping sweat from her brow, Utamaro, 1798 Hara, 13th station of The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, Hiroshige, 1833–34

The Ukiyo-e genre of woodblock prints and paintings flourished in Japan primarily from the 17th to 19th centuries. Aimed at the prosperous merchant class in the urbanizing Edo period (1603–1867), depictions of beautiful women, kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, scenes from history and folk tales, travel scenes, landscapes, and erotica were amongst the more popular themes.

Edo (modern Tokyo) was chosen as the seat of government by the military dictatorship in the early 17th century. The merchant class at the bottom of the social order found themselves the greatest beneficiaries of the city's rapid economic growth. Many indulged in the entertainments of kabuki theatre, courtesans, and geisha of the pleasure districts. The term ukiyo ("floating world"; 浮世) came to describe this hedonistic lifestyle. Printed images of this, or "ukiyo-e" ("pictures of the floating world"; 浮世絵; Japanese pronunciation: [u.ki.jo.e]), emerged in the late 17th century from the bookprinting world, and were popular with the merchant class who were now wealthy enough that they could afford to decorate their homes with such works.

In the 1670s Hishikawa Moronobu was the earliest success with his paintings and monochromatic prints of beautiful women. Colour prints came gradually—at first, added by hand only for special commissions. By the 1740s, artists such as Okumura Masanobu used multiple woodblocks to print areas of colour. From the 1760s the success of Suzuki Harunobu's full-colour nishiki-e prints led to colour as a standard, each print made with ten or more colour blocks. The peak period in terms of quantity and quality was marked by portraits by masters such as Torii Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and Sharaku in the late 18th century. This peak was followed in the 19th century by a pair of masters: the bold formalist Hokusai, and the serene, atmospheric Hiroshige, who are best remembered for their landscapes. Following their deaths, and especially following the technological and social modernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e production went into steep decline.

Some ukiyo-e artists specialized in making paintings, but most works were prints. Artists rarely carved their own woodblocks for printing; rather, production was divided between the artist who designed the prints; the carver who cut the woodblocks; the printer who inked and pressed the woodblocks onto hand-made paper; and the publisher, who financed, promoted, and distributed the works. As printing was done by hand printers were able to achieve effects impossible to achieve with machines, such as blending or gradation of colours on the printing block.

Ukiyo-e was central to forming the West's perception of Japanese art in the late 19th century, especially the landscapes of Hokusai and Hiroshige. From the 1870s Japonism became a prominent trend and had a strong influence on the early Impressionists such as Degas, Manet, and Monet; Post-Impressionists such as van Gogh; and Toulouse-Lautrec and other Art Nouveau artists. The 20th century saw a revival in Japanese printmaking: the shin-hanga ("new prints") genre capitalized on Western interest in prints of traditional Japanese scenes, while the sōsaku-hanga ("creative prints") movement promoted works designed, carved, and printed by a single pair of hands.

History

Pre-history

Since antiquity, Japanese art had found patrons in the aristocracy, military governments, and religious authorities. Until the 16th century, the lives of the common people had not been subject to the painters, and even when they did find their way into genre paintings, they were luxury items made for the ruling samurai and rich merchant classes. Later appeared works by and for an audience of townspeople, inexpensive monochromatic paintings of beautiful women, and scenes of the theatre and pleasure districts. The hand-produced nature of these shikomi-e limited the scale of their production, a limit that was soon overcome by genres that turned to mass-produced woodblock printing.

Maple Viewing at Takao (mid-16th century) by ja is one of the earliest Japanese paintings to feature the lives of the common people.

Woodblock printing in Japan traces back to the Hyakumantō Darani in 770 CE. Until the 17th century, such printing served for producing Buddhist seals and images. Moveable type appeared around 1600, but as the Japanese writing system required about 100 000 type pieces hand-carving text onto woodblocks was found to be more efficient. In Saga Domain, Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan combined printed text and images in an adaptation of The Tales of Ise (1608) and other books of literature. During the Kan'ei era (1624–1623) illustrated books of folk tales called tanrokubon, or "orange-green books", were the first books to be mass-produced using woodblock printing. Woodblock imagery continued to evolve as illustrations to the kanazōshi genre of tales of hedonistic urban life in the new capital of Edo (modern Tokyo). The rebuilding of Edo following the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 occasioned a modernization of the city, and the publication of illustrated printed books flourished in the rapidly urbanizing environment.

Following a prolonged period of civil war in the 16th century, Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed Shōgun with supreme power over Japan. He consolidated his government in the village of Edo, and required the territorial lords to assemble there with their entourages; the village grew during the Edo period (1603–1867) from a population of 1 800 to in excess of a million in the 19th century. Japanese society was divided into four social classes, with the ruling samurai class at the top and the merchant class at the bottom. The merchant class most benefited from the rapidly expanding economy, and their improved lot allowed for leisure that many sought in the pleasure districts—in particular Yoshiwara—and in collecting artworks to decorate their homes, which in earlier times had been well beyond their finacial means.

The term "ukiyo", which can be translated as "floating world", was homphonous with a ancient Buddhist term signifying "this world of sorrow and grief". The newer term at times was used to mean "erotic" or "stylish", amongst other meanings, and came to describe the hedonistic spirit of the time for the lower classes, celebrated in the novel Ukiyo monogatari ("Tales of the Floating World", c. 1661) by Asai Ryōi:

"... living only for the moment, savoring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking sake, and diverting oneself just in floating, unconcerned by the prospect of imminent poverty, buoyant and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the river current: this is what we call ukiyo."

Emergence of ukiyo-e (late 17th – early 18th centuries)

Hishikawa Moronobu, late 1670s or early 1680s

Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694) was the first of the book illustrators to achieve such prominence that, by 1672, he could sign his name to his work. Moronobu was a prolific illustrator who worked in a wide variety of genres, and developed an influential style of portraying beautiful women. Most significant, he began to produce illustrations not for books, but as single-sheet images, which could stand alone or as part of a series. The Hishikawa school attracted a large number of followers, as well as imitators such as Sugimura Jihei, and signaled the beginning of the popularization of a new artform.

Torii Kiyonobu I and Kaigetsudō Ando became prominent emulators of Moronobu's style following the master's death, though neither was a member of the Hishikawa school. Both discarded background detail in favour of focus on the human figure—kabuki actors in the yakusha-e of Kiyonobu and the Torii school that followed him, and courtesans in the bijin-ga of Ando and his Kaigetsudō school. Ando and his followers produced a stereotyped female image whose set design and pose lent itself to effective mass production, and its popularity created a demand for paintings that other artists schools took advantage of. The Kaigetsudō school and its "Kaigetsudō beauty" it popularized came to an end after Ando's exile over his role in the Ejima-Ikushima scandal of 1714.

The paintings of Miyagawa Chōshun (1683–1752) portrayed early 18th-century life in delicate colours. Chōshun made no prints. The Miyagawa school he founded in the early-18th century specialized in romantic paintings in style more refined in line and colour than the Kaigetsudō school. Chōshun allowed greater expressive freedom in his adherents, a group that later included Hokusai.

Colour prints (mid-18th century)

Even in the earliest, monochromatic prints and books, colour was added by hand for special commissions. Demand for colour in the early-18th century was met with tan-e prints hand-tinted with orange and sometimes green or yellow. These were followed in the 1720s with a vogue for pink-tinted beni-e, and later the lacquer-like ink of the urushi-e. In 1744, the benizuri-e were the first successes in colour printing, using multiple woodblocks—one for each colour, at first beni pink and vegetable green.

Western-style graphical perspective and increased use of printed colour were amongst the innovations Okumura Masanobu claimed.
Taking the Evening Cool by Ryōgoku Bridge, c. 1745

A great self-promoter, Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764) played a major role during the period of rapid technical development in printing from the late-17th to mid-18th centuries. He established a shop in 1707, and combined elements of the major contemporary schools in a wide array of genres, though Masanobu himself belonged to no school. Amongst the innovations in his romantic, lyrical images was the introduction of Western-style perspective in the uki-e genre; the long, narrow hashira-e prints; and the combination of graphics and literature in prints that included self-penned haiku poetry.

Suzuki Harunobu's were amongst the first full-colour nishiki-e prints.
Couple in a Snowstorm, 1768

Ukiyo-e reached a peak in the late 17th century with the advent of full-colour prints, developed after Edo returned to prosperity under Tanuma Okitsugu after a long depression. These popular colour prints came to be called nishiki-e, or "brocade pictures", as their brilliant colours seemed to bear resemblance to imported Chinese Shuchiang brocades, known in Japanese as Shokkō nishiki.

The delicate, romantic prints of Suzuki Harunobu (1725–1770) were some of the earliest successes to make expressive use of colour, printed with up to a dozen separate plates to handle the different colours and half-tones. His restrained, graceful prints invoked the classicism of waka poetry and yamato-e painting. Harunobu's was prolific, and the dominant ukiyo-e artist of his time. The success of Harunobu's colourful nishiki-e from 1765 on led to a steep decline in demand for the limited palettes of benizuri-e and urushi-e, as well as for hand-coloured prints.

A trend against the idealism of the prints of Harunobu and the Torii school grew following Harunobu's death in 1770. Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1793) and his school produced portraits of kabuki actors with greater fidelity to the actors' actual features than had been the trend Sometime-collaborators Koryūsai (1735–c. 1790) and Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820) were prominent depictors of women who also moved ukiyo-e away from the dominance of Harunobu's idealism by focusing on contemporary urban fashions and celebrated real-world courtesans and geisha. The Kitao school that Shigemasa founded was one of the dominant schools of the closing decades of the 18th century.

Peak period (late 18th century)

The late 18th century—in particular the Kansei era (1789–1791)—saw a peak flowering of Ukiyo-e in quantity and quality. The period of Kansei Reforms brought about a focus on beuaty and harmony that collapsed into decadence and disharmony in the next century as the reforms broke down and tensions rose, culminating in the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Especially in the 1780s, Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) of the Torii school returned ukiyo-e to its focus on beauties and urban scenes, and were printed on large sheets of paper, often as multiprint horizontal diptychs or triptychs. His works dispensed with the poetic dreamscapes of Harunobu's, opting instead for realistic depictions of idealized female forms posed in scenic locations. the women in the latest fashions. He also produced portraits of kabuki actors, in a realistic style that included the accompanying members of the stage such as the musicians and chorus. ja (1756–1815) was among Kiyonaga's followers, and also produced scenes of beauties in beautiful scenery.

Cooling on Riverside
Torii Kiyonaga, c. 1785

Three Known Beauties
Utamaro, c. 1793

Sawamura Sojurō III
Sharaku, 1794

Utamaro (c. 1753–1806) made his name in the 1790s with his bijin ōkubi-e ("large-headed pictures of beautiful women"), portraits focusing on the head and upper torso, a style others had previously employed in portraits of kabuki actors. Utamaro experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background. Utamaro's individuated beauties were in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been the norm. By the end of the decade, especially following the death of his patron Tsutaya Jūzaburō in 1797, Utamaro's prodigious output declined in quality.

Appearing suddenly in 1794 and disappearing just as suddenly ten months later, the prints of the enigmatic Sharaku are amongst ukiyo-e's best known. Sharaku produced striking portraits of kabuki actors, introducing a greater level of realism into his prints that emphasized the differences between the actor and the character portrayed. The expresive, contorted faces he depicted contrasted sharply with the serene, even mask-like faces more common to artists such as Harunobu or Utamaro. Sharaku's work found resistance, and in 1795 he disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared, and his identitied is yet unknown. Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825) produced kabuki portraits in a style Edo townsfolk found more accessible, emphasizing dramatic postures and avoiding Sharaku's realism.

Edo was the primary centre of ukiyo-e production throughout the Edo period. The so-called Kamigata region comprising the areas in and around Kyoto and Osaka was another major centre of production. In contrast to the range of usbjects in the Edo prints, those of Kamigata tended to be portraits of kabuki actors. The style of the Kamigata prints was little distinguished from those of Edo until the late 18th century, partly because artists often moved back and forth between the two areas.

Late flowering: flora, fauna, and landscapes (19th century)

Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, 1831

Landscapes had been given limited attention since Moronobu, and formed an important element in the works of Kiyonaga and Shuncho. It was not until late in the Edo period that landscape came into its own as a genre, especially via the works of Hokusai and Hiroshige. The landscape genre has come to define ukiyo-e for Western audiences, though ukiyo-e had a long history preceding these late-era masters. The Japanese landscape differed from the Western tradition in that it relied more heavily on imagination, composition, and atmosphere than on strict observance of nature.

The self-proclaimed "mad painter" Hokusai (1760–1849) enjoyed a long, varied career. His work is marked by a lack of the sentimentality common to ukiyo-e, and a focus on formalism influenced by Western art. Amongst his accomplishments are his illustrations of Takizawa Bakin's novel ja, his series of sketchbooks, the Hokusai Manga, and his popularization the landscape genre with Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes his best-known print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. n contrast to the work of the older masters, Hokusai's colours were bold, flat, and abstract, and his subject was not the pleaure districts but the lives and environment of the common people at work.

Shōno-juku, the forty-fifth station of Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō

Hiroshige (1797–1858) is considered Hokusai's greatest rival in stature. He specialized in pictures of birds and flowers, and serene landscapes, and is best known for his travel series, such as The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō. His work was more realistic, subtly coloured, and atmospheric than Hokusai's; nature and the seasons were key elements: mist, rain, snow, and moonlight were prominent parts of his compositions.

Decline (late 19th century)

Following the deaths of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e suffered a sharp decline in quantity and quality. The rapid Westernization of the Meiji period that followed saw woodblock printing turn its services to journalism, and face cometition from photography. Practitioners of pure ukiyo-e became more rare, and tastes turned away from a genre seen as a remnant of an obsolescant era. Artists continued to produce occasional notable works, but by the 1890s the tradition was moribund.

Synthetic pigments imported from Germany began to replace traditional organic ones in the mid-19th century. Many prints from this era made extensive use of a bright red, and were called aka-e ("red pictures"). Artists such as Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) led a trend in the 1860s of gruesome scenes of murders and ghosts. Kiyochika (1847–1915) is known for his prints documenting the rapid changes taking place in modernizing Tokyo, such as the introduction of railways; and his depictions of the wars Japan fought with China and with Russia.

Westernization and industrialization in the late-19th century contributed to the decline of old-fashioned ukiyo-e. View of the Steam Engine at Tanakawa, Tokyo,ja, 1870

In 1842, pictures of courtesans, geisha and actors (e.g., onnagata) were banned as part of the Tenpō Reforms. Pictures with these motifs experienced some revival when they were permitted again. During the Kaei era, (1848–1854), many foreign merchant ships came to Japan. The ukiyo-e of that time reflect the cultural changes.

Discovery by the West

Aside from Dutch traders, who had had trading relations dating to the beginning of the Edo period, Westerners paid little notice to Japanese art before the mid-19th century, and when they did rarely distinguished it from other art from the East. The arrival in Edo of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853 led to the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854, which opened Japan to the outside world after over two centuries of seclusion. Ukiyo-e prints were amongst the items he brought back to the United States. Such prints had appeared in Paris from at least the 1830s, and by the 1850s were numerous; reception was mixed, and even when praised ukiyo-e was generally thought inferior to Western works and their emphasis on mastery of naturalistic perspective and anatomy. Japanese art drew notice at the International Exhibition of 1867 in Paris, and became fashionable in France and England in the 1870s and 1880s. The prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige played a prominent role in shaping Western perceptions of Japanese art.

Japanese art, and particularly ukiyo-e prints, came to influence early Impressionist painters. John LaFarge, Manet and Whistler were early collectors who incorporated Japanese themes and compositional techniques into thir paintings as early as the 1860s. Degas, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec were amongst the artists taken in by Japonism.

Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge, Hiroshige, c. 1857–58

Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, Whistler, c. 1872–75

Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake, Hiroshige, 1857

Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige), van Gogh, 1887

Ukiyo-e had a significant influence on Western artists in the late 19th century. Whistler was an early collector who incorporated Japanese themes into his paintings, and imitated their compositions. Van Gogh painted copies of prints by Hiroshige.

Early Europeans promoters and scholars of Ukiyoe-e and Japanese art included writer Edmond de Goncourt, art critic fr—who coined the term "Japonism"{{efn|Burty coined the term [le Japonisme] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) in French in 1872.— and art dealer Siegfried Bing, who from 1888 to 1891 published the magazine fr in English, French, and German editions. Amercian Ernest Fenollosa was the earliest Wetern devotee of Japanese culture, and did much to promote Japanese art—Hokusai was the star of his inaugural exhibition as first curator of Japanese art Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in Tokyo in 1898 he curated the first ukiyo-e exhibition in Japan. In the 20th century Imagist poets such as Amy Lowell found inspiration in ukiyo-e prints—Lowell in 1919 published a book of poetry called Pictures of the Floating World on oriental themes or in an oriental style.

Daughter traditions (20th century)

In the 20th century shin-hanga fed the demand for prints with traditional Japanese themes and Western techniques.
Shiba Zōjōji, Hasui Kawase, 1925

In 1915 publisher Shōzaburō Watanabe introduced the term shin-hanga ("new prints") to describe the style of prints he published. The prints, by artists such as Hasui Kawase, Shinsui Itō, and Goyō Hashiguchi, featured traditional Japanese subject matter and were aimed at foreign and upscale Japanese audiences. Artists of the sōsaku-hanga ("creative prints") movement took control of every aspect of the printmaking process—design, carving, and printing were by the same pair of hands. The foundation of the Japanese Woodcut Artists' Association in 1918 marks the beginning of this movement. Works ranged from the entirely abstract ones of Kōshirō Onchi (1891–1955) to the traditional figurative depictions of Japanese scenes of Un'ichi Hiratsuka (1895–1997).

Though ukiyo-e saw its end in the Meiji period, and the term is not applied to works after that time, in the 20th century, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, new print forms arose in Japan. The shin-hanga ("New Prints") movement, a print equivalent to the Nihonga movement in painting, drew upon ukiyo-e traditions, creating images of traditional Japanese scenes, in traditional modes and forms. Inspired by European Impressionism, the artists incorporated Western elements such as the effects of light and the expression of individual moods but focused on strictly traditional themes. The major publisher was Watanabe Shōzaburō, who is credited with creating the movement. Important artists included Itō Shinsui and Kawase Hasui, who were named Living National Treasures by the Japanese government. Shin-hanga was particularly popular among Western collectors, who enjoyed images of traditional Japan and mourned its loss, as Japan pressed forward with modernization and Westernization campaigns.

The less-well-known sōsaku-hanga movement, literally creative prints, followed a Western concept of what art should be: the product of the creativity of the artists, creativity over artisanship. Traditionally, the processes of making ukiyo-e — the design, carving, printing, and publishing — were separated and done by different and highly specialized people (as was also traditionally the case with Western woodcuts). Sōsaku-hanga advocated that the artist should be involved in all stages of production. The movement was formally established with the formation of the Japanese Creative Print Society in 1918, however, it was commercially less successful, as Western collectors preferred the more traditionally Japanese look of shin-hanga.

Style

A defining of most ukiyo-e prints is a bold, flat line. The earliest prints were monochromatic, and these lines were the only printed element; even with the advent of colour this characteristic line continued to dominate. Compostion is noted for the arrangement of forms in flat spaces. The aesthetic of flat areas of colour contrasts with the modulated colours expected in Western traditions.

The earlier ukiyo-e artists brought with them a sophisticated knowledge of and training in the composition principals of classical Chinese painting; gradually these artists shed the overt Chinese influence to develop a native Japanese idiom. The early ukiyo-e artists have been called "Primitives" in the sense that the print medium was a new challenge to which they adapted these centuries-old techniques—their image designs are not considered "primitive".

Themes and genres

Typical subjects were female beauties, kabuki actors, and landscapes. The women depicted were most often courtesans and geisha at leisure, and promoted the entertainments to be found in the pleasure districts. Portraits of celebrities were much in demand, in particular those from the kabuki and sumo worlds, two of the most popular entertainments of the era. While the landscape has come to define ukiyo-e for many Westerners, the genre flourished relatively late in the history of ukiyo-e.

Ukiyo-e grew out of book illustration—many of Moronobu's earliest single-page prints were originally pages from books he had illustrated. Books of illustrations were popular and continued be an important outlet for ukiyo-e artists—in the late period, Hokusai produced the three-volume One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and the fifteen-volume Hokusai Manga, the latter a compendium of over 4 000 sketches of a wide variety or realistic and fantastic subjects.

Traditional Japanese religions do not consider sex or pornography a moral corruption in the Judaeo-Christian sense, and until the changing morals of the Meiji era led to its suppression, shunga erotic prints were a major genre. Many displayed a high level a draughtsmanship, and often humour, in their explicit depictions of bedroom scenes, voyeurs, and oversized anatomy. Nearly every ukiyo-e master produced shunga at some point in his career.

Production

Production of prints

Main articles: Relief printing and Woodblock printing in Japan

Ukiyo-e prints were printed on hand-made paper and were pressed by hand, rather than by mechanical press as in the West, and were the results of teams of artisans in several workshops—it was rare for a designers to cut their own woodblocks. First, an artist produced an original image called a shita-e. A more elaborate and finished version, the hanshita-e, was placed on a block of cherry wood and rubbed with oil until the upper layers of paper could be pulled away, leaving a translucent layer of paper that the block-cutter could use as a guide. The block-cutter cut away the non-black areas of the image, leaving raised areas that were inked to leave an impression.

Prints were made with blocks face up so the printer could vary pressure for different effects, and watch as paper absorbed the water-based sumi ink.

The ukiyo-e print was a commercial art form, and the publisher played an important role. The prints were mass-marketed and produced in editions of up to 10 000 copies and promoted by retailers and traveling sellers at prices affordable to its audience of prosperous townspeople. In some cases the prints advertised kimono designs by the artist behind the print.

Woodblock in preparation

A completed woodblock

Production of colour prints

While colour printing in Japan dates back to the 1640s, early ukiyo-e prints were in only black ink. Colour was sometimes added by hand, using a red lead ink called tan-e prints, or later in a pink safflower ink in beni-e prints. Colour printing arrived in books in the 1720s, and in single-sheet prints in the 1740s, with a different block and printing for each colour. Early colours were limited to pink and green; techniques expanded over the following two decades to allow up to five colours. The mid-1760s brought full-colour nishiki-e prints made from ten or more woodblocks. Registration marks called kentō were placed on one corner and an adjacent side, to keep the blocks for each colour aligned correctly.

Printers used natural colour dyes made from mineral or vegetable sources. The dyes had a translucent quality that allowed a variety of colours to be mixed from primary red, blue, and yellow pigments. In the 18th century Prussian blue became popular, and was particularly prominent in the landscapes of Hokusai and Hiroshige. Also prominent in these two artists works was bokashi, where the printer produced gradations of colour or the blending one one colour into another. In the 1860s, traditional dyes gave way to harsher synthetic aniline dyes.

Collecting

Dealers normally refer to ukiyo-e prints by the names of the standard sizes, most commonly the 34.5-by-22.5-centimetre (13.6 in × 8.9 in) aiban, the 22.5-by-19-centimetre (8.9 in × 7.5 in) chūban, and the 38-by-23-centimetre (15.0 in × 9.1 in) ōban (approximate; precise sizes vary, and paper was often trimmed after printing).

See also

• List of ukiyo-e terms
• Schools of ukiyo-e artists

References

Works cited

Academic journals

• Hickman, Money L. (1978). "Views of the Floating World". MFA Bulletin. 76. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: 4–33. JSTOR 4171617. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Meech-Pekarik, Julia (1982). "Early Collectors of Japanese Prints and the Metropolitan Museum of Art". Metropolitan Museum Journal. 17. University of Chicago Press: 93–118. JSTOR 1512790. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Singer, Robert T. (1986). "Japanese Painting of the Edo Period". Archaeology. 39 (2). Archaeological Institute of America: 64–67. JSTOR 41731745. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Watanabe, Toshio (1984). "The Western Image of Japanese Art in the Late Edo Period". Modern Asian Studies. 18 (4). Cambridge University Press: 667–684. JSTOR 312343. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Weisberg, Gabriel P. (1975). "Aspects of Japonisme". The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 62 (4). Cleveland Museum of Art: 120–130. JSTOR 25152585. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Weisberg, Gabriel P.; Rakusin, Muriel; Rakusin, Stanley (1986). "On Understanding Artistic Japan". The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts. 1. Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU: 6–19. JSTOR 1503900. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

Books

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• Michener, James A. (1959). Japanese Print: From the Early Masters to the Modern. Tuttle Publishing. OCLC 187406340. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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• Penkoff, Ronald (1964). Roots of the Ukiyo-e; early woodcuts of the floating world (PDF). Ball State Teachers College. OCLC 681751700. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
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Further reading

• Forbes, Andrew ; Henley, David (2012). Suzuki Harunobu: 100 Beauties. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B00AC2NB8Y
• Forbes, Andrew ; Henley, David (2012). Forty-Seven Ronin: Utagawa Kuniyoshi Edition. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B00ADQM8II
• Forrer, Matthi, Willem R. van Gulik, Jack Hillier A Sheaf of Japanese Papers, The Hague, Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1979. ISBN 90-70265-71-0
• Hickey, Gary (1994). The Ukiyo-e Blues: An Analysis of the Influence of Prussian Blue on Ukiyo-e in the 1830s. University of Melbourne.
• Kaempfer, H. M. (ed.), Ukiyo-e Studies and Pleasures, A Collection of Essays on the Art of Japanese Prints, The Hague, Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1978. ISBN 90-70216-01-9
• Kanada, Margaret Miller (1989). Color Woodblock Printmaking: The Traditional Method of Ukiyo-e. Shufunomoto Company, Limited. ISBN 978-4-07-975316-6.
• Lambourne, Lionel. Japonisme: Cultural Crossings Between Japan and the West. London, New York: Phaidon Press, 2005. ISBN 0-7148-4105-6
• Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10-ISBN 0192114476/13-ISBN 9780192114471; OCLC 5246796
• Friese, Gordon. Hori-shi. 249 facsimiles of different seals from 96 Japanese engravers. Unna: Verlag im bücherzentrum, 2008.
• Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints. Amsterdam: Hotei. 10-ISBN 9074822657/13-ISBN 9789074822657; OCLC 61666175
• Roni Uever, Susugu Yoshida (1991) Ukiyo-E: 250 Years of Japanese Art, Gallery Books, 1991, ISBN 0-8317-9041-5
• Yamada, Chisaburah F. Dialogue in Art: Japan and the West. Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1976. ISBN 0-87011-214-7

External links

• A Guide to the Ukiyo-e Sites of the Internet
• Ukiyoe collection at Edo-Tokyo Museum
• Kuniyoshi Project
• Viewing Japanese Prints
• "Ukiyo-e". Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System.
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Video: Pictures of the Floating World
• Universes in Collision: Men and Women in Nineteenth Century Japanese Prints
• Hokusai Online Exhibition; Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
• The Floating World of Ukiyo-e, Library of Congress exhibition
• Ukiyo-e Techniques, an interactive collection of videos and animations demonstrating the techniques of master printmaker Keiji Shinohara.
• Ukiyo-e Caricatures 1842–1905 Database of the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Vienna
• Biographies of over 100 Japanese print-making artists
• Japanese prints ukiyo-e