Ukiyo-e

The "floating world" (ukiyo) was the pleasure quarters of Edo (Tokyo): the theatres, teahouses, and entertainment districts where the rising merchant class spent its money and leisure. Ukiyo-e captured its stars and its scenes: glamorous kabuki actors in dramatic poses, celebrated courtesans and beauties (bijin-ga), sumo wrestlers, ghost stories, and later the famous landscapes of a country beginning to travel. The word carries a gentle double meaning: a Buddhist term for the transient, sorrowful world had been playfully rewritten to mean the fleeting world of pleasure: enjoy it while it lasts.

A woodblock print was a team effort, not a solo artwork. The artist drew the design; a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one for each colour; a printer inked the blocks and pressed the paper by hand, building the image up colour by colour; and a publisher financed and sold the result. The full-colour prints that resulted were called nishiki-e (錦絵), "brocade pictures." The masters are world-famous: Hokusai, whose Great Wave and views of Mount Fuji are among the most reproduced images on earth, and Hiroshige, whose serene landscapes of the road and the seasons defined the genre. When these prints reached Europe in the 19th century, their flat colour, bold outlines, and daring compositions stunned artists like Monet and Van Gogh, sparking the craze known as Japonisme.