Ukiyo-e: Japanese Woodblock Prints

During the Edo period (1603 to 1868), Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shoguns from Edo, today's Tokyo, and was largely closed to the outside world. Its cities grew rich, and townspeople spent money on theater, fashion, travel and pictures. The pictures they bought most were ukiyo-e, "pictures of the floating world," the world of fleeting pleasures: kabuki actors, celebrated beauties, festivals and, later, famous landscapes. You met earlier Japanese painting and European woodcuts in Art History I.

A ukiyo-e print was a team effort. A publisher chose the subject and paid for everything. A designer, such as Hokusai or Hiroshige, drew the picture in ink on thin paper. A carver pasted the drawing onto a block of cherry wood and cut away everything but the lines. More blocks were cut, one for each color. A printer brushed water-based color on each block in turn and pressed the paper onto it by hand with a flat pad, lining it up with notches cut in the blocks so the colors fit.

Looking closely: The Great Wave

Describe. A huge wave curls over three long boats full of rowers; its foam breaks into claw-like fingers. Far behind, small and still, is Mount Fuji. Analyze. The wave fills the left side and arcs over the boats; the low, distant Fuji sits in the hollow it makes, so the eye goes from the wave's crest down to the mountain. The deep blue is Prussian blue, a strong, lasting synthetic pigment newly imported from Europe. A low viewpoint and Western-style depth (the mountain made small by distance) were new in Japanese prints. Interpret. Nature's force against human effort, and the calm, sacred mountain within the storm. It is the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1830 to 1832).

In Hiroshige's print, people hurry across a wooden bridge under a sudden summer rain, drawn as fine, dark lines over the whole sheet. The bridge cuts diagonally across the picture, seen from above. Each rain line had to be carved by hand.