Ukiyo-e : Japanese woodblock printing

A sheet of mulberry paper, a block of cherry wood, and a knife held at a low angle. That is all it took to print the images that once circulated through Edo by the thousand.

Ukiyo-e (浮世絵, "images of the floating world") is a Japanese art movement born in the Edo period. Artists published their work as woodblock prints, cut and inked by hand. It became the most popular art genre in Japan between the 17th and the 19th century, until Western techniques and Western tastes changed everything.

What are the themes of Ukiyo-e paintings?

Ukiyo-e artworks are produced through the technique of xylography, the art of printing from a carved wooden block. This process was first used by the Chinese to print characters from a woodblock bearing an engraving of the original text.

In Japan, the same principle was borrowed to reproduce drawings first for religious and later for artistic purposes.

Certain elements appear frequently and prominently in Ukiyo-e prints: beautiful women, eroticism, the Japanese calendar, drama, wrestling, nature and the supernatural.

Bijin-ga ukiyo-e: the splendid Japanese women

Among Ukiyo-e prints there is the category of bijin-ga (美人画), paintings of pretty women. These are very often portraits of geisha or famous courtesans from the Yoshiwara district. They are shown alone or in groups, enjoying themselves or walking in the streets of the city. Not all the women depicted in the bijin-ga are courtesans, however.

The prints of pretty women do more than promote the libertinism of Yoshiwara. They also record the Japanese ideal of beauty at the time. The women in the portraits set the trends. They are adorned with the most fashionable clothes, including the kimono (着物) worn by women, and with the accessories everyone wanted that season.

Shunga print: Japanese eroticism

Shunga ("springtime image") prints deal with erotic subjects. They enjoyed a certain popularity between 1600 and 1868. The erotic genre is among the main focuses and appears in the work of several major Ukiyo-e artists.

Shunga often depict love relationships between ordinary and middle-class townspeople, with a somewhat humorous touch. The couples intertwine in surreal contortions and often feature genitalia of inordinate proportions. They are rarely naked during lovemaking. This is done on purpose, to draw the eye to the exposed body parts.

E goyomi: Japanese calendar

E-goyomi, or "calendar pictures", are luxury prints from Japan. Reserved for wealthy customers, they were produced using the most advanced techniques. It is hard to believe that such artistic productions were actually used to identify the short and long months of the Japanese calendar.

The numbers are cleverly hidden somewhere in the design: in the patterns, or in the kimono or the obi belt (帯) of a female character. Their appeal lies in the subtle wit with which the artist disguises the message of the Japanese print calendar.

Yakusha-e: traditional Japanese theater print

The "actors' images", the Yakusha-e, are another major theme in Ukiyo-e prints. This category focuses on the second most popular attraction of the Yoshiwara district after courtesans: the world of Kabuki theater.

Yakusha-e, as the name suggests, are artistic portraits of famous Japanese theater actors. These prints helped promote Kabuki theater and often made the actors they depicted popular.

They are usually shown in the form of a picture sold as a single sheet.

The actors appear in their makeup, performing on stage. The portraits immortalized the mie, the held poses and expressions that the actors adopted at a dramatic peak.

Some portraits were made in honor of popular actors who had passed away. They very often appear as triptychs, works in three parts, with the main actor of a play on the central sheet.

Sumo-e: floating world art and Japanese wrestling

There are also sumo-e, ukiyo-e portraits and images related to the art of Japanese wrestling. Sumo enjoyed a wide following then, as it still does today.

As with images of actors, sumo-e are portraits of famous champions and wrestlers. They also depict the rituals that precede the fights, the ceremonies of entering the ring and the actions of the fighters. They are not limited to what happens in the ring. They also show the attitudes of spectators and the temples and other places where the tournaments were held.

Japanese landscape print

Some Japanese prints move away from urban joys and make nature their main subject. Temples, shrines, plants and animals such as birds and insects are frequent in this category.

In contrast to Chinese art and the traditional Japanese painting inspired by it, the natural landscapes in Ukiyo-e prints are not abstract places. They are richly colored, more or less faithful views of a real location. You often feel placed inside the scene.

These landscape sheets are the ones I see most often framed in our customers' homes. A single print on a pale wall carries the whole Wabi-Sabi idea of beauty in a quiet, imperfect moment.

Japanese mythology and its folklore

Some prints go further and depict fantastic and ghostly creatures from the Shinto world. They were popular with an audience that had developed a taste for the strange and the unusual. For some artists, after censorship tightened, these creatures also became a way to criticize or mock the Japanese political sphere of the time.

Japanese printmaking process

Ukiyo-e prints are the result of collaborative work. A whole team made up the production chain: an artist, an engraver, one or more printers, and a publisher. Each one handled a precise stage.

This division of labour is the reason no single name can claim a sheet. It is also a good example of Kaizen, the patient improvement of one gesture repeated for years.

The artist

He would make a shita-e, a drawing in black ink called sumi. This was often made entirely by the artist, but sometimes he produced only a sketch which others completed. Very thin, translucent paper, the hanshita-e, was used. The drawing served as the model for the engraver in the second stage.

Graver

The engraver used the model to sculpt a replica of the design into the wood, putting the lines of the shita-e into relief. He placed the hanshita-e on the wooden board and carved through the paper, destroying the original drawing in the process.

At the slightest mistake, everything had to be started over. This is why the engraver needed years of experience, and worked under the supervision of the artist.

For colour productions, several plates were engraved, one for each colour. Only the areas to be coloured were raised this time. A mark called kento was carved on each plate. That mark mattered during printing.

Printer

The printer handled the inking. He applied to the line plates the colours that were to appear on the print. The operation was no less delicate than the engraving, and this craftsman also had to be very experienced.

He would first lightly dampen the plate, then spread an even layer of ink on the raised areas. He placed a sheet of paper on the inked board to print a replica of the artist's drawing.

When the print was to contain multiple colours, each plate was inked separately in its own colour. The colours were then printed in turn on the same sheet. The registration marks left by the engraver allowed the colours to overlap perfectly, without spilling into each other.

The publisher

The publisher was neither an artist nor a craftsman. He was not directly involved in making the print. He held the role of conductor. He brought artist, engraver and printer together and coordinated their work. He was also in charge of selling the prints once they came off the blocks.

Materials and tools used to make a print

The production of Ukiyo-e prints, especially in its early days, relied almost entirely on natural Japanese materials.

The pigments used for the drawings and colours came from plants and minerals. Black sumi ink, for example, was made mainly from pine soot mixed with a binder.

The boards used were cherry wood, easy to engrave and durable under repeated printing. The timber was dried, stored and conditioned for years, then cut into planks a few centimetres thick.

The printer used a special tool, the hake, a brush made from horsehair. The hake was soaked in water before taking up the pigment, so the ink landed on the plate in the right amount.

The engraver could use up to seven tools. He relied mostly on the hangito, a knife held like a pen to cut the wood. He gave great care and maintenance to his tools.

Those same motifs still travel on fabric. Waves, plum branches and bijin faces printed on cotton are how most people wear ukiyo-e today.

History of ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e did not arrive fully formed. It grew over roughly two centuries, from hand-tinted book illustrations to full-colour landscape sheets sold across the country.

Japanese Illustrations

After years of civil war and earlier Mongol invasions, Japan found stability towards the end of the 16th century under the Tokugawa shogunate. This favoured the growth of cities and the rise of a new class of merchants and craftsmen, the chonin.

The chonin were wealthy and lived in the pursuit of pleasure and luxury. The word ukiyo, "floating world", is a Buddhist concept turned slightly away from its original meaning to describe that way of life. It is easy to understand why books about urban pleasures, the e-hon, became popular with this new bourgeoisie.

Ukiyo-e, "images of the floating world", appeared first in e-hon, illustrated books. Hishikawa Moronobu, who drew hundreds of illustrations, is considered the pioneer of this art. He inspired followers such as Sugimura Jihei, Torii Kiyonobu I and Kaigetsudo Ando. The latter founded the Kaigetsudo school, alongside the Torii line.

At this time ukiyo-e was still at a primitive stage. Certain technical and stylistic processes had not yet been developed. Colours were few, barely varied, and applied mainly by hand. In style, the details of the foreground subject came before the background.

Brocart Stamps

Before the advent of colour printing, artists produced monochrome black-and-white images. For special commissions, the drawing was coloured by hand with paint, usually orange, green or yellow.

In the 18th century came nishiki-e, "brocade images". Unlike tan-e, nishiki-e are polychrome and display a wider range of colours. The colours were no longer added by hand. They were printed with a separate block carved for each colour. Some prints used as many as twelve.

The technique was expensive. It was first used for calendar pictures, the e-goyomi, made for wealthy customers, and it is an innovation credited to Suzuki Harunobu. He is the major artist of this period. His style is poetic, carried by an idealism that many of his followers later tried to shed.

The ukiyo-e of Harunobu's successors shows a stronger fidelity to reality, in features, expressions and subjects. Katsukawa Shunshō made portraits of actors that were more lifelike. Koryūsai and Kitao Shigemasa turned to real geisha and courtesans rather than idealized female types.

The Genroku Era: The Golden Age

Ukiyo-e then reached a golden age towards the end of the 18th century. Print production was at its peak and widely successful. Production methods and styles evolved with it.

Kiyonaga presented fashionable women and urban scenes in large format, or in two or three joined sheets as diptychs and triptychs. Kabuki actors remained present in his work, in a livelier and more realistic manner.

Utamaro's portraits of women, his bijin ōkubi-e, show only the bust and head. He managed to personalize the features of his subjects instead of bending to the uniform ideal models in use.

The city of Edo was the home of this golden age. Ukiyo-e artists also worked in the regions around Kyoto and Osaka. Differences existed between the ukiyo-e of Edo and that of those regions. The themes covered there were less diverse. Those artists seemed more interested in portraits of actors.

Censorship and New Themes (early 19th century)

The law already required an official government seal of approval on prints before they could be sold. Offenders faced harsh punishment. Censorship over ukiyo-e then intensified, with bans on the themes of luxury and pleasure that had defined the genre.

This pushed ukiyo-e in a new direction during the 19th century. Natural landscapes replaced urban ones. Artists turned to the representation of nature. Hokusai and Hiroshige made it a style in its own right.

Hokusai, who called himself "the old man mad about painting", produced his famous views of nature with Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. His best known work is The Great Wave off Kanagawa, printed around 1831. He also looked at the everyday life of the city, with a less licentious approach. The small scenes of the Hokusai Manga show it well.

Decline towards the end of the 19th

After years of isolation, Japan opened to the West with the Meiji restoration of 1868. The ukiyo-e of this period went through deep changes.

Chemical paints, brought from the West, began to replace the natural pigments that had characterized the prints. Some artists produced sheets loaded with a bright artificial red. These are aka-e, "red images".

Ukiyo-e also took on themes far from its classical subjects. Yoshitoshi depicted fantastic, supernatural and mythological scenes, with extraordinary creatures, ghosts and legendary heroes. Many consider him the last great ukiyo-e artist.

New artistic movements appeared, with their own styles and principles. The shin-hanga movement, launched by the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, sought to break with the reputation of ukiyo-e as mass commercial art. Its artists borrowed from the Western impressionists and worked with the play of light, while keeping traditional subjects.

With another movement, sōsaku hanga or "creative printmaking", a print was no longer a collaboration between artist and craftsmen. These artists handled the whole process themselves: drawing, engraving, inking and printing.

The Ukiyo-e and the West

Following the Kanagawa convention, which opened Japan to American and then European ships, ukiyo-e absorbed Western influences. Some prints were produced in a European manner. The artist Toyoharu made prints that imitated the perspective of European painting. His work influenced other Japanese artists, including Hiroshige and Hokusai. Artists also discovered Prussian blue, an imported pigment that became central to Hokusai's waves.

Ukiyo-e influenced the Western art world in return, helped by the Paris World's Fair of 1867. The American Ernest Fenollosa took a strong interest in it and published early studies on the subject. The prints went on to mark several Western painters, among them Vincent van Gogh, Monet, Klimt and Degas, in a movement called Japonism.

Conclusion

Ukiyo-e is a Japanese art form that, unlike the classical genres, dealt with popular subjects. It also differs in the way a print is made. The artist alone cannot claim credit for a sheet. The craftsmen, each expert in his field, played an essential and long underappreciated role.

Historically, ukiyo-e starts from humble beginnings and becomes a complete art style thanks to pioneers like Moronobu and innovators like Sukenobu. The opening of Japan to the West marks the decline of ukiyo-e in its traditional form, through the arrival of photography and chemical colours.

Ukiyo-e is one of many artistic movements that followed one another over time. To go further into Japanese culture, read our Japanese martial arts guide.

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