Woodblock printing in Japan - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Woodblock printing in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e
' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

artistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type

Movable type

Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....

, but was only widely adopted in Japan surprisingly late, during the Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

(1603-1867). Although similar to woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

in western printmaking

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

in some regards, moku hanga differs greatly in that water-based inks are used (as opposed to western woodcut which uses oil-based inks), allowing for a wide range of vivid color, glazes and color transparency.

History

Woodblock-printed books from Chinese

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

Buddhist temples were seen in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

as early as the eighth century. In 764 the Empress Kōken

Empress Koken

, also known as , was the 46th and the 48th emperor of Japan respectively, according to the traditional order of succession. Empress Kōken first reigned from 749 to 758, then she reascended the throne as Empress Shōtoku from 765 until her death in 770....

commissioned one million small wooden pagodas, each containing a small woodblock scroll printed with a Buddhist text (Hyakumanto Darani
Hyakumanto Darani
The , literally the One Million Pagodas and Dharani Prayers, is a famous large-scale woodblock printing, the earliest recorded uses of woodblock printing in Japan....

). These were distributed to temples around the country as thanksgiving for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion

Fujiwara no Nakamaro

, later also given the name of by Emperor Kōnin, was an aristocrat and poet of Nara period in Japan. His father was Fujiwara no Muchimaro, founder of Nanke lineage of Fujiwara clan....

of 764. These are the earliest examples of woodblock printing known, or documented, from Japan.

By the eleventh century, Buddhist temples in Japan were producing their own printed books of sutras, mandalas, and other Buddhist texts and images. For centuries, printing was restricted only to the Buddhist sphere, as it was too expensive for mass production, and did not have a receptive, literate public to which such things might be marketed.

It was not until 1590 that the first secular work would be printed in Japan. This was the Setsuyō-shū, a two-volume Chinese-Japanese dictionary. Though the Jesuits operated a movable type printing press

Printing press

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

in Nagasaki from 1590, printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

was a daimyo warrior, general and politician of the Sengoku period. He unified the political factions of Japan. He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, and brought an end to the Sengoku period. The period of his rule is often called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle...

's army from Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

in 1593 had far greater influence on the development of the medium. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu

was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...

, even before becoming shogun, effected the creation of the first native moveable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts. As shogun, Ieyasu would act to promote literacy and learning, leading to the beginnings of the emergence of an educated urban public. Printing was not dominated by the shogunate at this point, however; private printers appeared in Kyoto at the beginning of the 17th century, and Toyotomi Hideyori

Toyotomi Hideyori

was the son and designated successor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who first united all of Japan. His mother, Yodo-dono, was the niece of Oda Nobunaga....

, Ieyasu's primary political opponent, aided in the development and spread of the medium as well. An edition of the Confucian

Confucius

Confucius , literally "Master Kong", was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period....

Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei

Emperor Go-Yozei

was the 107th Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Go-Yōzei's reign spanned the years from 1586 through 1611, corresponding to the transition between the Azuchi-Momoyama period and the Edo period....

. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant today. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the running script style of Japanese writings would be better reproduced using woodblocks, and so woodblocks were once more adopted; by 1640 they were once again being used for nearly all purposes.

The medium quickly gained popularity among artists, and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books. The great pioneers in applying this method to the creation of art books, and in preceding mass production for general consumption, were Honami Kōetsu

Honami Koetsu

was a Japanese craftsman, potter, lacquerer, and calligrapher, whose work is generally considered to have inspired the founding of the Rinpa school of painting.-Early life:...

and Suminokura Soan. At their studio in Saga, the pair created a number of woodblocks of the Japanese classics, both text and images, essentially converting handscrolls to printed books, and reproducing them for wider consumption. These books, now known as Kōetsu Books, Suminokura Books, or Saga Books, are considered the first and finest printed reproductions of many of these classic tales; the Saga Book of the Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari), printed in 1608, is especially renowned.

Woodblock printing, though more tedious and expensive than later methods, was far less so than the traditional method of writing out each copy of a book by hand; thus, Japan began to see something of literary mass production. While the Saga Books were printed on expensive fancy paper, and used various embellishments, being printed specifically for a small circle of literary connoisseurs, other printers in Kyoto quickly adapted the technique to producing cheaper books in large numbers, for more general consumption. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, advice manuals, kibyōshi
Kibyoshi
' is a genre of Japanese picture book kusazōshi produced during the middle of the Edo period, from 1775 to the early 19th century. Physically identifiable by their yellow-backed covers, kibyōshi were typically printed in 10 page volumes, many spanning two to three volumes in length, with the...

(satirical novels), sharebon
Sharebon
The was a pre-modern Japanese literary genre. Plots revolved around humor and entertainment at the pleasure quarters. It is a sub-genre of gesaku.-Characteristics:As a sub-genre of gesaku, humor was a major aspect to each story...

(books on urban culture), art books, and play scripts for the jōruri (puppet) theatre. Often, within a certain genre, such as the jōruri theatre scripts, a particular style of writing would come to be the standard for that genre; in other words, one person's personal calligraphic style was adopted as the standard style for printing plays.

Many publishing houses arose and grew, publishing both books and individual prints. One of the most famous and successful was called Tsuta-ya

Tsutaya Juzaburo

was the founder and head of the Tsutaya publishing house in Edo period Japan, which produced the ukiyo-e woodblock print works of many of the period's most famous artists, along with illustrated books...

. A publisher's ownership of the physical woodblocks used to print a given text or image constituted the closest equivalent to a concept of "copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

" that existed at this time. Publishers or individuals could buy woodblocks from one another, and thus take over the production of certain texts, but beyond the protective ownership of a given set of blocks (and thus a very particular representation of a given subject), there was no legal conception of the ownership of ideas. Plays would be adopted by competing theatres, and either reproduced wholesale, or individual plot elements or characters might be adapted; this activity was considered legitimate and routine, at the time.

Woodblock printing continued to be used after the decline of ukiyo-e, and the introduction of movable type and other technologies, as a method and medium for printing texts as well as for producing art, both within traditional modes such as ukiyo-e and in a variety of more radical or Western forms that might be construed as modern art

Modern art

Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...

Technique

The technique for printing texts and images was generally quite similar; the obvious differences being in the volume produced when working with texts (many pages for a single work), and the complexity of multiple colors that might be encountered when working with images. Images in books were almost always in monochrome (black ink only), and for a time art prints were likewise monochrome or done in only two or three colors.

The text or image would first be drawn onto washi
Washi
is a type of paper made in Japan. Washi is commonly made using fibers from the bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub , or the paper mulberry, but also can be made using bamboo, hemp, rice, and wheat...

(Japanese paper), and then glued onto a plank of wood, usually cherry. Wood would then be cut away, based on the outlines given by the drawing. A small wooden hard object called a baren
Baren
Baren is a Japanese hand tool used in printmaking processes such as woodcut or lino cut.The baren is a disk like device with a flat bottom and on the reverse side, a knotted handle...

would be used to press or burnish the paper against the inked woodblock, thus applying the ink onto the paper. Although this may have been done purely by hand at first, complex wooden mechanisms were soon invented and adopted to help hold the woodblock perfectly still and to apply proper pressure in the printing process. This would be especially helpful once multiple colors began to be introduced, and needed to be applied with precision atop previous ink layers.

While, again, text was nearly always monochrome, as were images in books, the growth of the popularity of ukiyo-e brought with it demand for ever increasing numbers of colors and complexity of techniques. The stages of this development follow. - monochrome printing using only black ink - red ink details or highlights added by hand after the printing process；green was sometimes used as well - orange highlights using a red pigment called tan, , and other styles in which a single color would be used in addition to, or instead of, black ink - a method in which glue was used to thicken the ink, emboldening the image; gold, mica and other substances were often used to enhance the image further. Urushi-e can also refer to paintings using lacquer

Lacquer

In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...

instead of paint; lacquer was very rarely if ever used on prints. - a method in which multiple blocks were used for separate portions of the image, allowing a number of colors to be utilized to achieve incredibly complex and detailed images; a separate block would be carved to apply only to the portion of the image designated for a single color. Registration marks called kentō were used to ensure correspondence between the application of each block.

Schools and movements

Japanese printmaking, as many other features of Japanese art, tended to organise itself into schools and movements. The most notable schools and, later, movements of moku hanga were:

Torii school
Torii school
This article is about a school of ukiyo-e art; for the sculpture style, see Tori style. For the Torii samurai clan, see Torii family.The Torii school was a school of ukiyo-e painting and printing founded in Edo...

, from 1700
Kaigetsudō school
Kaigetsudo school
The Kaigetsudō school was a school of ukiyo-e painting and printmaking founded in Edo around 1700-1714. It is often said that the various Kaigetsudō artists' styles are so similar, many scholars find it nearly impossible to differentiate them; thus, many Kaigetsudō paintings are attributed to the...

, from 1700-14
Katsukawa school
Katsukawa school
The Katsukawa school was a school of Japanese ukiyo-e art, founded by Miyagawa Shunsui. It specialized in paintings and prints of kabuki actors , sumo wrestlers, and beautiful women ....

, from about 1740, including the artists Suzuki Harunobu
Suzuki Harunobu
was a Japanese woodblock print artist, one of the most famous in the Ukiyo-e style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many special techniques, and depicted a wide variety of...

and Hokusai
Hokusai
was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting...
Utagawa school
Utagawa school
The was a group of Japanese woodblock print artists, founded by Toyoharu. His pupil, Toyokuni I, took over after Toyoharu's death and raised the group to become the most famous and powerful woodblock print school for the remainder of the 19th century....

, from 1842, including the artist Kunisada
Kunisada
Utagawa Kunisada was the most popular, prolific and financially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan...
Sōsaku hanga
Sosaku hanga
was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods. It advocated the principles of "self-drawn" , "self-carved" and "self-printed" art, stressing the artist, motivated by a desire for self-expression, as the sole creator...

, "Creative Prints" movement, from 1904
Shin hanga
Shin hanga
was an art movement in early 20th-century Japan, during the Taishō and Shōwa periods, that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e art rooted in the Edo and Meiji periods...

"New Prints" movement, from 1915

Other artists, such as Utamaro

Utamaro

was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints . His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga...

, Sharaku

Sharaku

is widely considered to be one of the great masters of the woodblock printing in Japan. Little is known of him, besides his ukiyo-e prints; neither his true name nor the dates of his birth or death are known with any certainty...

, and Hiroshige

Hiroshige

was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, and one of the last great artists in that tradition. He was also referred to as Andō Hiroshige and by the art name of Ichiyūsai Hiroshige ....

did not belong to a specific school, and drew from a wider tradition.

Paper sizes

There were a number of standard sizes for prints in the Edo period, some of which follow. (All centimeter measurements are approximate.)

Chūban (中判, middle size)(26x19cm)
Chūtanzaku (中短冊)(38x13cm) - also known simply as tanzaku; half of an ōban, cut lengthwise
Hashira-e (柱絵)(68-73 x 12-16 cm) - a narrow, upright format often called "pillar prints"
Hosoban (細判)(33x15cm) - several hosoban would be cut from an ō-ōban (大大判, large large size); hosoban was the smallest of the common sheet sizes.
Kakemono-e (掛物絵)(76.5x23cm) - large, upright format comprised approximately of two ōban arranged one above the other. Kakemono
Kakemono
A , more commonly referred to as a , is a Japanese scroll painting or calligraphy mounted usually with silk fabric edges on a flexible backing, so that it can be rolled for storage....

also refers to hanging scroll paintings.
Ōban (大判, large size)(39x26.5 cm) - the most common sheet size.
Ō-hosoban (大細判)(38x17cm) - also known as Ō-tanzaku
Shikishiban (21 x 18 cm) often used for surimono
Surimono
are a genre of Japanese woodblock print. They were privately commissioned for special occasions such as the New Year. Surimono literally means "printed thing". Being produced in small numbers for a mostly educated audience of literati, surimono were often more experimental in subject matter and...

The Japanese terms for vertical (portrait) and horizontal (landscape) formats for images are tate-e (立て絵) and yoko-e (横絵), respectively.

External links

Ukiyo-e Caricatures 1842-1905 Database of the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Vienna
The process of woodblock printing Movie by Adachi Woodcut Print
Japanese Woodblock Print Collection, University of California, San Francisco
Contemporary Japanese prints from the 50th anniversary of the College Women's Association of Japan Print Show

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Technique

Schools and movements

Paper sizes

See also

External links