Ukiyo-e E-Book

Dr. Mark McGregor / Mariko Ishida

• Herausgeber: Vyiha Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Japanese woodblock prints "Ukiyo-e", are one of the most popular Japanese art form. Covering topics such as the philosophy and the techniques at the basis of Ukiyo-e, this book provides a detailed survey of the famous artists, along with over 100 pictures. Further than being an expert in Eastern Asia arts, Dr. Mark McGregor has been an avid collector of Ukiyo-e for more than 50 years, learning the methods and materials employed in Japanese printmaking. Mariko Ishida curated the work as a knowledgeable gallery owner specialized in Ukiyo-e. She provides advices to amateurs on how to collect, care for, view and, eventually, buy Japanese Ukiyo-e prints.

Leseprobe

Contents

History and Philosophy

Artists and Publishers

Deconstructing an Ukiyo-e

Techniques

How to select an Ukiyo-e

Care for your Ukiyo-e prints

Selected works

Glossary

References

History and Philosophy

History of the Ukiyo-e

THE earliest woodblock-printed book that is still preserved is an illustrated Chinese scroll of Buddhist scriptures from the Diamond Sutra from 868 AD. In the fifth century, Japan opened formal relations with China. This is why the first Japanese woodblock prints may also date from around the time of this Chinese scroll. Unfortunately, it is tricky to estimate the date of woodblock printing’s emergence in Japan because so few early specimens have survived, and those that have are rarely dated.

Among the first block printed images known in Japan are personal seals and early religious icons. Because of Buddhists’ belief in creating many images of the Buddha would help in preparing one's path toward salvation, many of them spent each day stamping hundreds or thousands of block-carved pictures. These sheets of stamped images were also used as offerings for the dead, sometimes by placing the printed sheets inside the hollows of religious icons or statues. In addition to printing sutras and scriptures, temples also distributed images to pilgrims as votive prints, amulets, or exchanges for monetary offerings.

The 17th century saw some of the earliest woodblock prints depicting fully-developed ukiyo-e subjects. The distant precursors of ukiyo-e included early yamato-e ("Japanese pictures") found in picture scrolls from as early as the Heian period. For instance, the decorative onna-e ("women's style paintings"), which featured areas of opaque colors applied within strong outlines and by the drawing convention called hikime kagihana ("slit eyes and hooked nose"), was five centuries later adopted by ukiyo-e artists to draw the human face. After the Heian period, what would become known as the Tosa school would adopt a number of stylistic aspects of the early yamato-e paintings. By the 16th century, Kanô school artists (followers of Kanô Masanobu, 1434-1559) followed suit. Furthermore, classical Chinese painting models—which arrived in the country through imported paintings and block-printed books or through adaptations by Japanese artists—were also influential. The 16th century also saw the emergence of the Nara-e ("Nara pictures"), a somewhat more popularized adaptation of the Tosa style presented in illustrated books and scrolls.

Needless to say, many ukiyo-e artists were trained in these traditional schools of painting, incorporating a number of elements from the long history of native Japanese and imported Chinese painting styles. Ukiyo-e’s blossoming was a unique development that showed how traditional Japanese painting methods evolved to use new methodologies in aesthetically depicting the contemporary everyday world of the merchant and middle class. In all probability, the most immediate precursors to ukiyo-e paintings might be the early painted genre screens of the Momoyama period (late 16th – early 17th centuries), whose style and subject matter would later figure front and center in ukiyo-e works. Although usually commissioned by the ruling class and depicted the nobility, such works of art also included scenes depicting common people at leisure or enjoying different forms of entertainment.

Transitional artists of the mid-16th through the early 17th centuries, such as Iwasa Matabei (1578–1650) and his students have been known to have contributed significantly to the development of a pictorial style that would mark the tone and subject of the first true ukiyo-e artists. When Hishikawa Moronobu appeared in the 1670s, with his training in Kanô and Tosa-style painting, he innovated the blending of traditional techniques with the sensibility and style of his ukiyo-e predecessors.

While early ukiyo-e prints (1653–1763) were mainly book illustrations and black-and-white paintings, Hishikawa Moronobu’s works were indeed the first to demonstrate the idea of making single prints separately from the content. He therefore elevated the art form. A plebeian, he presented his art from the perspective of the commoner and was naturally more sympathetic in interpreting the life of those in the lower class.

Around 1686, soon after artists began to produce black-and-white prints, Torii Kiyomasu and Torii Kyomitsu invented a technique that used two or three different plates (each corresponding to a different color), called tan-e beni-e. When the registration system was revised in 1765, artists were able to do many color works. Suzuki Harunobu was the first to make multi-color ukiyo-e prints. After Harunobu’s death, Kitao Shigemasa and Kitagawa Utamaro developed the art further by depicting individual faces instead of using the more generic traditional faces prevalent during that era.

Until 1830, most of the motifs featured beautiful women and kabuki actors. When local tourism flourished in the country, artists added landscapes to the vocabulary of ukiyo-e. In 1831, Katsushika Hokusai made the famous 36 views of Mt Fuji series. Two years later, Utagawa Hiroshige created the Tokkaido Highway series of 53 prints.

Ukiyo-e was born in the middle of the civil wars in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Those were periods when noblemen in Kyoto, though impoverished like the samurai and knowing not what tomorrow would bring, tried to enrich their daily lives and enjoy pleasures of the moment. Courtesans entertained soldiers in Kyoto who had come from various parts of the country. Soon, courtesans became hugely popular, as evidenced in countless contemporary novels, farces, and songs. Artists of the Kanô and Tosa schools departed from the traditional classical subjects, which by then had become largely irrelevant to everyday life. Such artists painted these women on their jolly picnics or profligate drinking parties with men. The artists found ample colorful material in the vivacious epicurean life of the bourgeois, featuring upstart samurai or merchants who had become rich through foreign trade or had taken advantage of expanding economic conditions.

Aristocratic painters did not really understand or fathom the psychology of those in the lower class, so they depicted them as they interpreted them. War lords and the newly rich graciously loved these paintings, as they found the subjects delightfully familiar. When Hideyoshi and Ieyasu forged lasting peace throughout the land, these pictures became even more popular so much that such subjects were even painted in one of the reception halls of Nagoya Castle, which belonged to the Lord of Owari, the sixth son of Ieyasu.

The further development and increasing popularity of ukiyo-e were also influenced by its association with printing—as printing technologies made great technological strides toward the end of the seventeenth century, the art was copiously introduced to the masses. Because printing eventually enabled the inexpensive reproduction of several hundred copies of a single design, it helped in the easy distribution of ukiyo-e among the common people, who finally were grateful to have an art form they could understand. Thus, ukiyo-e became the plebeian's own art chiefly in its printed form.

Many Japanese in those days could not appreciate the classical schools such as the Kanô, Tosa, and Sesshu, whose exalted subjects were too remote to be understood, even if frequently seen, by the populace. On the other hand, the avid patrons of ukiyo-e prints and illustrated popular books included not only ignorant people or children, but also ladies in the courts of the shogun and daimyo, as well as those in samurai and wealthy merchant families. As the common people greatly outnumbered those in the samurai class, the originally aristocratic ukiyo-e was, therefore, brought up by plebeian foster parents and patronized by the populace. This gave it a unique position in the world's history of the arts.

Artists’ attitude during this period was mainly swayed by their patrons, the Edo populace. Like the Parisians, they were quite contented in their lives in their own metropolis, considering it as the most interesting, vivacious, and prosperous city in the country. This perception was brought about by their limited knowledge of places outside of Edo caused by travel difficulties and the lack of desire to obtain a wider cultural outlook. They found most appealing the popular interpretation of their own life, encouraging ukiyo-e artists to focus on this subject matter. The artists, as well as the impoverished samurai, moreover, reached no higher level of culture and education than the public who demanded their works, and they felt quite at home reproducing the everyday life about them. They were conscious not of themselves but of their art, and felt a strong impulse to depict what they saw. Through their keen powers of observation, they depicted the common daily life in Edo with the highest pictorial sensibility. Moreover, this limitation in scope only enabled them to intensify their studies. Also, the nature of their subject matter prevented them from taking it to a high spiritual level and forced them to penetrate more deeply into every phase of the people's most primitive emotional life. As their subject was contemporary life, they were often compelled to create many of their pictures quickly, especially those pertaining current events, such as a special festival at a temple or a newly presented beauty. This was particularly true of stage pictures, which had to be issued within ten or twelve days after the performance started. On the downside, this demand for the quickest completion spawned bad practices. Talentless designers would often shamelessly choose the quick and easy way by stealing and copying another’s design from another book instead of creating their own. Thus, many of such artists did not try to create designs as their main concern was to pander to the most popular tastes of the Edo populace, eventually earning criticism for their work’s lack of originality. This phenomenon is more observable in ukiyo-e prints because they were duplicated easily and therefore were produced in great numbers—add the fact that they were more popular than prints in other lands—that many of them have survived all kinds of destruction, intentional or otherwise.

Occasionally, ambitious and original artists would crawl out of the woodwork and revolted against the old technique and traditions, establishing their own ways. In the well-regulated Japanese feudal society, such behavior caused them—especially the Kanô and Tosa artists—to be not only disinherited by their families but also ostracized by their schools. However, it is important to note that only those artists who were fully convinced of their unusual talent who did actually dare take the dangerous step that cost them their social standing and of comfortable living.

Most ukiyo-e artists born in the families of merchants or laborers chose the profession of their own accord and studied as apprentices with a master. As soon as they were able to earn their own living, they were not obliged by their master to faithfully observe his style and technique, as did those in other schools. However, this did not diminish their strong feeling of obligation to their master for their training. Even if the master wished to impose on his students his own style, it would have been impossible because ukiyo-e was an always-changing topical art— it deals particularly with the life of women, who were constantly changing the style of their coiffures, the colors and designs of their dresses, and their manners and customs. The most competent ukiyo-e artists, therefore, had to be alert to note the current fashion, altering and adapting the style of the beauties and their changing social conditions in their pictures to accord with what was in vogue, and thus maintain their popularity. Moreover, always there were one or two leaders among them with sufficiently high standards of art to guide them in establishing a new technique in drawing, composition, or color scheme.

Some criticize that ukiyo-e artists had neither leadership nor individuality, as they mostly moved and worked as a group, with only differences in technical skill. Indeed, in their earlier days, such artists imitated respectfully the styles of their predecessors. Ultimately, however, each one found an individual way of expressing their own ideas. Moronobu established his own style, and Ishikawa Ryusen, Sugimura Masataka, and others imitated him. No matter how hard they tried, the followers of Harunobu—Harushige, Masunobu, and Yoshinobu—could not succeed in reproducing the unsophisticated and dreamy faces of his subjects. What’s more, Harushige had individuality, which can be gleaned from the coarse yet intelligent faces of his women, and his landscapes that were more skillful and accurate—if only slightly—than those of his master.

After Hokusai and Hiroshige died and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e sharply declined in quantity and quality. During the Meiji period’s rapid Westernization that swept across the land, woodblock printing was realigned to serve journalism’s demands, as well as faced competition from photography. In the 1860s, artists such as Yoshitoshi led a trend that featured gruesome scenes of murders and ghosts, monsters and supernatural beings, and legendary Japanese and Chinese heroes. Those who practiced pure ukiyo-e, however, became harder to find. Eventually, tastes turned away from a genre that was considered an irrelevant remnant of an obsolescent era. Artists continued to produce occasional notable works, but by the 1890s the tradition was essentially dead.

Philosophy at the basis of the floating world

AFTER the violent civil wars that raged around the country for hundreds of years, the Tokugawa clan ended up controlling the political and military power for 250 years, with the emperor relegated to a mere symbolic figure. The Shogun, the supreme lord, imposed an autarchic regime that strictly prohibited any travel abroad and contact with foreigners. In this context, the big cities grew and developed and the middle class obtained increasingly greater importance.

The Ukiyo-e prints tell us about the “floating world,” precisely describing in their distinct artistic style a historical period and the Japanese society’s profound cultural transformation after the crisis with the feudal aristocracy. The prints also depicted the new stimuli inspired by the new middle classes.

The word “Ukiyo” means the world (“yo”) of suffering (“uki”). Ukiyo originates from the Buddhist definition of the transience of everything and expresses a strong sense of disdain regarding material attachment, from which a wise man should have escaped.

From its original meaning, the word significantly changed during the seventeenth century—although the Japanese character pertaining to suffering transformed into one indicating a floating status, it was pronounced in the same way. Whereas the old society wanted to escape from those shallow and transitory pleasures, the new society loved to lose and renew itself in them. The parties, the fashion, the world of entertainment, the realities of mercenary love, the clandestine passion that developed around the folk theatre of the kabuki and the forbidden quarters of the “cities without nights.” There were the quarters of pleasure, such as the famous Yoshiwara in Edo (modern Tokyo), where concubines used to study new gestures and behaviors with the intent of showing off a visible rich elegance and to achieve a further refinement of their skills in entertaining.

More than just serving as a place for people to quickly sate their desires, such quarters slowly became places frequented by rich merchants, actors, literates, artists, editors and aristocrats who were secretly looking for an escape from all the formal rigor of their daily lives. Losing themselves in pleasure was a way to distance themselves from the melancholies of reality.

All the emotions, passions and beliefs expressed through the richness of the prints (Ukiyo-e literally means “images of the floating world”) created a new aesthetic vision so palpable that it ended up deeply influencing the French artists of the nineteenth century and to remain in vogue even today.

Artists and Publishers

The publishing process

PRODUCING Japanese woodcut prints required the careful, well-trained collaboration of at least three men: an artist to make the design; a block-cutter to carve a key block after the designer's drawing, and also any necessary numbers of blocks in order to complete the whole color scheme; and a printer to print the design from these blocks. All these artisans worked for a publisher, and without the publisher’s instructions a designer could not deal directly with cutters and printers. Naturally, first-class publishers hired skillful craftsmen in order to produce the prints in the most desirable state. Fine cutting demanded an able man who not only possessed an accurate hand in carving lines exactly but understood the meaning of each line to such an extent that he corrected, in the course of cutting, undesirable lines caused by the designer's slips of the brush. Carvers in the early days must have had more culture than later ones. The first-class printer, though uneducated in other ways, must also have had enough aesthetic sensitiveness to be trusted by the designer to mix their colors in such a way as to produce prints of a high standard.

The publisher oversees the harmonious union of the three elements and also takes up the project and carries it through financially. It was, therefore, very important for any Ukiyo-e designer to have a sympathetic, careful, and wealthy publisher to provide them with excellent craftsmen and to look after the whole business of printing without cutting down its expense. Otherwise, even if the design was marvelous, it might have not come out as a first-class print

The publishers were, naturally, more interested in the salability of their products. There were those who, regardless of expense, endeavored to produce only the very best artistic quality of print, including design, drawing, block-cutting, and printing, and selling it, accordingly, for a high price. Some took a different attitude, producing a less expensive and more popular-priced print, not particularly artistic, though the block cutting and printing were good. There were others who only published prints of secondary quality, so that they could dispose of them reasonably, and still others who bought old worn-out blocks on which they carelessly printed pictures with cheap, bright pigments for people of strictly limited means and for the many visitors to Edo who had but little money to spend.

Life of an artist

ANYONE who was keen on becoming one of those well-respected Ukiyo-e artists usually started their training in their early teens when they got accepted into a master's studio either as day pupils or apprentices. Apprenticeship, in particular, was a common training method for artists and craftsmen of any trade in feudal society. Apprentices must totally obey anything the master told them to do, generally in a severe disciplinary context. For starters, the master would ask apprentices to work on their line drawing and brush strokes techniques using one of the master’s simple drawings as a model. During this beginner’s training, the master examined and corrected their work, helpfully demonstrating the proper execution of certain techniques. Whenever a pupil was deemed to have satisfied or met the master’s expectations, they were given more examples to follow, with increasing difficulty. Eventually, a pupil who successfully hurdled all these trials would be allowed to copy in full color one of their master's paintings by applying especially prepared thin paper over it. They were also allowed to watch their master at work whenever they could in order to observe and learn the technical secrets. Upon acquiring a certain degree of technical skill in possibly four or five years, the pupil was then allowed to create their own design. An apprentice also had other duties, such as keeping the studio in order, dissolving pigments, stretching silk on a frame and doing all sorts of errands inside and outside the household to pay for their lessons and living. When a pupil finally gained the master’s confidence in terms of their technical proficiency, they were sometimes allowed to fill in colors in unimportant parts of their master's painting and later on even to draw insignificant parts of a design under the master's supervision.

Carvers of blocks for printing and printers also trained through apprenticeship. After the 1840s, and presumably even earlier, one had to be apprenticed at the age of 10 for a period of 10 years in order to become a carver. Aside from serving the master in general work in the shop, the apprentice began their lessons by carving simple characters without any marked guide on odd pieces of woodblocks. Next, they carved blocks for song books written in large characters until they could perfect the task. Upon gaining sufficient skill in carving simple color blocks, the apprentice was allowed to do patterns on the dresses worn by figures in the picture. However, the more complex task of doing the outlines of the dresses, which showed the actual swing and swirl of the artist's brush strokes, would not yet be entrusted to them. When an apprentice had mastered these techniques, they proceeded to gouge out the parts of the block which were to show neither ink nor color in the printing. Meanwhile, the apprentice spent their evenings with compass and rule learning to space geometrical patterns correctly, because the artist usually did not draw these precisely but gave only a sketchy suggestion for the carver's apprentice to follow in working out the complete design.

The next step in the apprenticeship was to carve the human figure, beginning with hands and feet. Gaining the skill of carving the finger tips means the apprentice could also manage carving the nose, which had to be cut from its base straight down past the tip in one continuous line. On the block, carving such a delicate line as a nose or the outline of a face demands full confidence and ability, as there was no way of correcting a mistake in this area. That was why an apprentice could neither stop nor hesitate.

The ear and head, including the face line, came next. In cutting the block the carver had to reduce this line to one-third or one-fifth of its width in the original drawing—it was up to him to decide which side of the original line should be kept or whether to leave only the middle of it during cutting. It was the designer who basically forced the carver to make this decision, who did not draw a fine and sharp line as seen in the prints but a much broader one. Master carvers could cut face lines expressing the peculiarity of each artist's line even without any drawing by the latter. The line of the hair was the most difficult. This also was roughly drawn by the designer, and the carver had to depend on their own skill for working out the fine individual lines. They had also to differentiate each particular aspect of hair in order to produce the proper effect; for example, wet hair or the hair of a dead person.

For a printer apprentice, the first lessons included such tasks as moistening paper before printing, washing cloths and brushes, providing water, dissolving pigments, cooking the paste used for printing, and doing other work around the establishment until they were thoroughly accustomed to handling instruments and pigments. Then the apprentice began to print inexpensive design from the easiest and simplest color blocks, such as gray, yellow, blue, or to try their hand in embossing. Other colors followed. As it was not an easy task to print the key block with black ink evenly distributed, this training was given in the final stage of apprenticeship.

Deconstructing an Ukiyo-e

Parts of a print

WHILE it can often be challenging to master and understand titles, signatures, seals, inscriptions, and various other marks on Japanese prints, it is of supreme importance to get acquainted with these elements for one to not only appreciate the true value of a print but also to verify its authenticity. It is helpful to note that It is helpful to notice that what appears on ukiyo-e prints is mostly standardized and decipherable in the following different elements:

1. Series title

2. Subtitle

3. Artist's signature

4. Artist's seal

5. Publisher's seal

6. Censor's seal

7. Date seal

8. Printer's seal

9. Carver's seal

10. Other inscriptions, such as poems, biographies, descriptive stories, and other types of declarations

In addition, actor prints may include the names of the actors, the roles they performed, and the play titles.

Series title and subtitle

Japanese prints frequently include titles, either for the particular design or for the series to which the print belongs. Translating titles can be challenging, as printmakers or their publishers often used imaginative combinations of ideograms with meanings or connotations that cannot be fully articulated in today’s language context.

Artists' signature

Artists usually signed their prints with their artist or studio names (called gô or geimei, with the latter also referring to the stage name of an actor). Rarely, print artists used a kakihan, a “writing seal” or distinctive character, mark or design as their signature or seal. Moreover, the word monjin ("student" or "disciple") with a teacher's or master's name would sometimes preface a signature as an acknowledgment to the artist's master. Name changes would sometimes be indicated with a previous gô followed by “aratame” ("changing to") and then a newly chosen name. Artists would occasionally announce a requested design by placing oju ("by special request") before their signatures. Still, there are yet unusual signatures. For instance, Utamaro used to write shômei ("genuine name") to his signature in a few designs to indicate authenticity. Some artists, most famously Katsushika Hokusai, changed their names throughout their careers, using more than 60 signatures with different names or combinations. Adding further to the complication was the artists’ tendency to sign their works with their literary names (haimyô or haigô), not their studio names. Finally, most artists usually affixed an ending to their signatures, either ga (“picture”) or hitsu (fude, painting), which in the context of ukiyo-e printmaking meant "drawn by" or "painted by," respectively. There was typically no special significance to an artist using either of these suffixes, although occasionally an artist would drop one in favor of the other at a particular moment in his career, thus serving as an aid in dating a print. Other words included in the signature included “drawn by,” “from the brush of,” “painted by,” “ordered by,” after special request of,” “image” and “copied.”

Artists' seal

Many artists frequently used seals with their signatures, and such usage sometimes help in determining the approximate period when the print was made. Seals were derived from a various sources, such as the artist’s name designing the print, names or emblems used by earlier masters, literary names, studio and family names.

Publishers' seal

Many ukiyo-e prints bear seals that identify the publisher (hanmoto) or publisher-bookstore (honya). Publishers (and not the artists) owned the rights to the woodblocks, allowing them to reproduce prints without any involvement of the artist. Before the period of the Meiji restoration, no clear copyright laws existed, although a semblance of such copyright laws can be gleaned from what was understood surrounding woodblock ownership (called zôhan or “woodblock property”). The concept simply implied the right of owning and using the woodblocks to produce images or texts from them. Some of the woodblocks, however, were called kyûhan or “acquired blocks” as they were sold or transferred to a second or third publisher so that the subsequent editions of prints often involved several publishers. Most of the publishers’ seals were simple trademarks or ciphers, results of combinations of ideographs and pictorial marks. Occasionally, more elaborate publisher cartouches can be found in some early prints. Others include those in which the publisher's name and street address are inscribed along with the seal and perhaps even additional information such as advertising slogans or appeals to purchase the print.

Censor Seals

Before 1790, the restrictions on book and print publishing were enforced by magistrates and governors known as machi-bugyô ("administrators of the town"), who were empowered by the Shogun's government. However, in the 5th month of 1790, the publishers' guilds were requested by edict (part of the so-called “Kansei” reforms named after the era in which they took effect) to appoint their own censors (gyôji or "judge"), who were in effect a committee of rotating members. The seals were known as kiwame ("approved") and later aratame ("examined"). The application of censorship caused publishers to take various measures to avoid prosecution. Once completed, the design had to be perfect, without imperfections or mistakes that might embarrass the local daimyo. By 1842, the publishing guilds’ practice of self-censorship ended and government censors called e-nanushi ("headman of prints") were appointed to approve or reject designs. The use of various censor seals alone or in combination lasted until around 1875. Various forms of these seals or their combinations allow us to precisely date some prints, while other seals permit only an estimate within a range of years. In 1876, a new arrangement for censorship was established that requested publishers to submit their designs to the Naimusho ("Home Ministry"), requiring all prints to include information such as name, full address, and date. Publishers complied by inscribing this information either inside their seals and cartouches, or simply listing it in the margins.

Seals between 1790 and 1875 changed in the following periods: 1790–1804, 1805–1810, 1811–1814, 1815–1842, 1843–1847 (different seals), 1847–1852 (two and different seals), 1852–1853 (two rounded and one oval seals for the date), 1853–1857, 1857–1859, 1859–1872, 1872–1875.