In 1603, the city of Edo became the seat of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate, transforming a small fishing village into a metropolis of over a million people by the 19th century. This rapid urbanization created a unique social dynamic where the merchant class, positioned at the bottom of the rigid social order, accumulated enough wealth to indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle that the ruling samurai class frowned upon. This new world of pleasure districts, kabuki theatre, and courtesans became known as the ukiyo, or floating world, a term that homophonously echoed the Buddhist concept of the world of sorrow and grief, yet was repurposed to describe a carefree, ephemeral existence. The earliest ukiyo-e works emerged in the 1670s, with Hishikawa Moronobu producing monochromatic prints of beautiful women that broke away from the aristocratic and religious themes that had dominated Japanese art for centuries. These prints were not merely decorative; they were a visual language of the common people, capturing the fleeting moments of urban life with a vibrancy that had never been seen before. The term ukiyo-e, translating to picture[s] of the floating world, became the defining label for a genre that would flourish for two centuries, capturing the essence of a society in transition.
Masters of the Floating World
The late 18th century marked the golden age of ukiyo-e, a period when artists like Torii Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and the enigmatic Sharaku reached heights of technical and expressive mastery. Kiyonaga, a member of the Torii school, dispensed with the poetic dreamscapes of his predecessors to create realistic depictions of idealized female forms dressed in the latest fashions, often printed on large sheets of paper as multiprint diptychs or triptychs. Utamaro revolutionized the genre with his okubi-e, or large-headed pictures, which focused on the head and upper torso to capture the subtle differences in features and expressions of women from a wide variety of backgrounds. His individuated beauties stood in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been the norm, and his work remains one of the most celebrated achievements in the history of Japanese art. Sharaku, who appeared suddenly in 1794 and disappeared just ten months later, introduced a level of realism that emphasized the differences between the actor and the portrayed character, with expressive, contorted faces that contrasted sharply with the serene, mask-like faces of other artists. His real identity remains unknown, and his output ceased as mysteriously as it had begun, leaving behind a legacy of striking portraits that continue to captivate audiences today.
The Art of the Wave
Hokusai, the self-proclaimed mad painter, enjoyed a long and varied career that spanned over 70 years and included the use of over a hundred different names. His work is marked by a lack of the sentimentality common to ukiyo-e, and a focus on formalism influenced by Western art. Among his accomplishments are his illustrations of Takizawa Bakin's novel, his series of sketchbooks known as the Hokusai Manga, and his popularization of the landscape genre with Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes his best-known print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This print, one of the most famous works of Japanese art, features a large boat in the foreground, a smaller one behind it, and a small Mount Fuji in the background, demonstrating the artist's mastery of perspective and composition. Hokusai's colors were bold, flat, and abstract, and his subject was not the pleasure districts but the lives and environment of the common people at work. His influence extended far beyond Japan, shaping the perception of Japanese art in the West and inspiring generations of artists to come.
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 saw woodblock printing turn its services to journalism, and face competition from photography. Practitioners of pure ukiyo-e became more rare, and tastes turned away from a genre seen as a remnant of an obsolete era. However, in the 20th century, there was a revival in Japanese printmaking. The shin-hanga, or new prints, genre capitalized on Western interest in prints of traditional Japanese scenes, while the sōsaku hanga, or creative prints, movement promoted individualist works designed, carved, and printed by a single artist. Artists like Kanae Yamamoto, who produced Fisherman in 1904, took control of every aspect of the printmaking process, marking the beginning of a movement that favored individuality in its artists. Prints from the late 20th and 21st centuries have evolved from the concerns of earlier movements, especially the sōsaku hanga movement's emphasis on individual expression, incorporating techniques such as screen printing, etching, and mezzotint alongside traditional woodcutting.
The Western Discovery
Ukiyo-e was central to forming the West's perception of Japanese art in the late 19th century, particularly the landscapes of Hokusai and Hiroshige. From the 1870s onward, Japonisme became a prominent trend and had a strong influence on the early French Impressionists such as Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Claude Monet, as well as influencing Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh, and Art Nouveau artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige played a prominent role in shaping Western perceptions of Japanese art, and at the time of their introduction to the West, woodblock printing was the most common mass medium in Japan, and the Japanese considered it of little lasting value. American Ernest Fenollosa was the earliest Western devotee of Japanese culture, and did much to promote Japanese art, with Hokusai's works featuring prominently at his inaugural exhibition as first curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. By the end of the 19th century, the popularity of ukiyo-e in the West drove prices beyond the means of most collectors, with some, such as Degas, trading their own paintings for such prints.
The Production Process
Ukiyo-e prints were the works of teams of artisans in several workshops, and it was rare for designers to cut their own woodblocks. Labour was divided into four groups: the publisher, who commissioned, promoted, and distributed the prints; the artists, who provided the design image; the woodcarvers, who prepared the woodblocks for printing; and the printers, who made impressions of the woodblocks on paper. Normally only the names of the artist and publisher were credited on the finished print. The artist provided an ink drawing on thin paper, which was pasted to 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. The original drawing was destroyed in the process. 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, applied quickly in even horizontal strokes. Amongst the printer's tricks were embossing of the image, achieved by pressing an uninked woodblock on the paper to achieve effects, such as the textures of clothing patterns or fishing net, and other effects included burnishing, varnishing, overprinting, dusting with metal or mica, and sprays to imitate falling snow.
The Floating World's Legacy
Ukiyo-e has left an enduring legacy that extends far beyond the boundaries of Japan, influencing everything from modern manga to contemporary graphic design. The Hokusai Manga, a compendium of over 4000 sketches of a wide variety of realistic and fantastic subjects, is often cited as a precursor to modern manga, though Hokusai's book is not narrative, nor does the term manga originate with him. In English and other languages, the word manga is used in the restrictive sense of Japanese comics or Japanese-style comics, while in Japanese it indicates all forms of comics, cartooning, and caricature. The ukiyo-e print market was highly diversified, selling to a heterogeneous public from dayworkers to wealthy merchants, and the prints were mass-marketed, with total circulation of a print running into the thousands by the mid-19th century. The dyes in ukiyo-e prints are susceptible to fading when exposed even to low levels of light, making long-term display undesirable, and the paper they are printed on deteriorates when it comes in contact with acidic materials. Despite these challenges, ukiyo-e continues to be collected and studied, with the largest collection of ukiyo-e in Japan residing in the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum in the city of Matsumoto, and many of the largest high-quality collections lying outside Japan, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the British Museum.