Ukiyo-e

• Japanese: 浮世絵 (ukiyoe)

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese painting and woodblock prints, comprising a number of closely related styles, which formed one of the core genres of Edo period popular art. The term literally means "pictures of the floating world," and ukiyo-e images generally depict elements of urban commoner culture, especially kabuki actors, courtesans and other beautiful women, sumo wrestlers, and famous places around Edo and elsewhere.

One of the key concepts at the heart of the ukiyo-e aesthetic is the ephemeral nature both of the art itself and of its subjects. The notion of the "floating world" speaks primarily of ephemeral, short-lived experiences in the entertainment districts of the city, a beauty and enjoyment which is fleeting. While ukiyo-e paintings remained expensive objects which were meant to be kept and cherished, the nature of the medium of the woodblock print, along with mass production, allowed ukiyo-e prints to be produced and sold quite cheaply. While only the more wealthy merchants, and other elites, could generally afford to commission paintings, prints were available to the general masses. They were collectibles, but also ephemeral souveniers of one's experiences in the theatre or other entertainment districts of the city.

The genre originated in the late 17th century, reached its climax around 100 years later, and continued into the Meiji period, declining and coming to an end shortly after the turn of the 20th century.

Origins

Ukiyo-e has its origins in illustrated woodblock printed books, and in so-called "genre paintings" of urban life. These forms evolved over the course of the 17th century in parallel with other elements of urban culture such as kabuki, the courtesan districts, and various forms of humorous literature. Many of these paintings were by members of the Tosa school and Kanô school who had turned away from the formalized forms of their official schools to experiment in new forms. Iwasa Matabei (1578-1650) was one of the foremost producers of "genre paintings" at this time, many of his works depicting samurai with courtesans, kabuki dances, and the like.

Perhaps the true birth of ukiyo-e can be said to have occurred when works began being produced in considerable numbers in Edo. Though ukiyo-e consists of both paintings and prints, the reproducibility and low cost of woodblock prints are important elements of the genre, based as it was in being a popular art for the commoner masses; thus, the emergence of mass production of woodblock printed books and single-sheet images in this style is generally considered to mark the genre's true beginnings.

Ukiyo-e would continue to develop in the Kamigata area (i.e. Osaka and Kyoto), and would produce its own distinct styles and great masters, but the true core trend of development and prosperity arguably took place in Edo. Throughout the period, Kamigata remained the center for painting and Edo the center for flourishing production of woodblock prints, though both regions of course saw the production of innumerable works in both media. Even today, ukiyo-e at its full height of development is referred to as "Edo-e" (Edo pictures) in the Kamigata region.

Ukiyo-e had its start in Edo, appropriately enough, in the publishing district. There, in the Kanbun era of the Japanese calendar (1661-1673), one artist emerged as the primary producer of erotic images ([[shunga]) for illustrated books in what would come to be known as the ukiyo-e style. As his name is not known, he has come to be known in scholarship as "the Kanbun Master." He was followed roughly a decade later by Hishikawa Moronobu (d. 1694), who may have been his student, Sugimura Jihei (fl. c. 1681-1697), and others, who continued to produce these simple images, primarily of courtesans, dancing girls, and related erotic scenes.

Printmakers such as Yoshida Hanbei (fl. c. 1664-1689) and Nishikawa Sukenobu (1651-1750) produced similar works in Kamigata, leading the genre in Kamigata. Producing thousands of illustrations for over one hundred books, including many by the famous author Ihara Saikaku, both would remain among the most prolific ukiyo-e artists of the entire Edo period.

In both Edo and Kamigata, images were almost exclusively in monochrome black, sometimes with one or two colors used sparingly, primarily oranges and greens. Sometimes sheets would be hand-colored.

Early 18th century

Kabuki actor Torii Kiyomoto and his son Torii Kiyonobu moved to Edo from Osaka in 1687, and produced a great many prints and paintings, primarily as advertisements or promotional souveniers for the kabuki theatre. The Torii school thus founded would continue, under the descendants and students of its members, to dominate the art production of the kabuki theatres through the end of the Edo period.

The school painted primarily signboards and billboards on wood to advertise the theatres' current and upcoming productions, but they also produced single-sheet souvenier prints to be sold to theatregoers. These yakusha-e (actor pictures) depicted kabuki actors either individually or in scenes from the theatre, and would later develop into one of the chief sub-genres of ukiyo-e; it would later become quite common for prints to be made to represent a single given day's production.

Early Torii prints featured many of the same stylistic elements as the works of Moronobu and the others who came before, but made much greater use of the limited numbers of colors available. Though many of these prints used only two or three colors, these would be used quite liberally, and not only as highlights over a primarily monochrome work.

Another school which emerged around this time and which is worth noting is the Kaigetsudô school, founded by Kaigetsudô Ando (c. 1671-1743) in the first decade or so of the 18th century. An exception to the general trend of the genre, the Kaigetsudô artists worked primarily in paintings, not prints, and some never produced prints at all. Their works are typified by hanging scrolls of tall, standing courtesans or beauties in lavishly decorated and brightly colored kimono. Though artists had been painting courtesans and beautiful women since the very beginnings of early proto-ukiyo-e, the works of Ando and his disciples can perhaps be said to represent the true emergence of the sub-genre known as bijinga (pictures of beautiful women).

Kaigetsudô prints generally represented the same subjects, though considerably less colorfully, constrained as they were by the techniques and technology of the time. These works were nevertheless lavish in that they used the technique of urushi-e (lacquer pictures) pioneered by Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764). This style was distinguished by the use of thicker, bolder lines than had typically been used, the application of flecks of brass, bronze, or mica, and the addition of a glue to the inks to help simulate the shine of lacquer.

Over the course of the first half of the 18th century, ukiyo-e artists, primarily those of the Torii school, experimented with methods of adding fuller color to their prints. Benizuri-e, or "rose prints", of this period, sometimes featured as many as five different colors - rose, yellow, sienna brown, gray, mustard yellow, and black - but are still marked by a distinctly different appearance and creative technique than the full-color prints which would emerge in 1765.

This period of maturation also saw a diversification of subjects and the development of fuller compositions. One of the key elements to this development is seen in the addition of backgrounds, in other words, context, to what were previously more often than not figures in an empty space, with a minimum of objects or scenery around them. It remained quite common to hand-color prints, and some became as complex in composition as traditional landscape paintings; this represents the origins of landscape as a sub-genre within ukiyo-e, a sub-genre which would flourish in the early 19th century.

Decline

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Reference

• Lane, Richard. Images from the Floating World. Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky, 1978.