The Ukiyo-e Wood Block Print during the Edo Period Essay Example for Free

The Ukiyo-e Wood Block Print during the Edo Period Essay Mention Moronobu, and to the mind’s eye appears a procession of vigorous, picturesque figures, all the motley citizenry of old Edo (Tokyo); the magic name of Harunobu evokes slender, ethereal girls, as lovely and fragile as the first frost of winter; Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige – each name stands for a unique and arresting kind of beauty, whether of voluptuous femininity, masculine strength, or scenic grandeur. These men, and several dozen more, represent the ultimate glory of ukiyo-e. The ukiyo-e masters mark a fitting conclusion to the long and glowing tradition of classical Japanese art. Like the era which nurtured it (the Edo Period from 1600 to 1868), ukiyo-e represents a unique development in Japan, the growth of a great renaissance based upon a largely popular foundation, whereas the earlier high points of Japanese civilization had been forged largely by the aristocracy or the priesthood. That such popularization did not result in vulgarization is one of the wonders of the world of art. This was the consequence, in part, of the innate sense of restrained form and color harmony of the Japanese populace as a whole. At the same time the determined efforts of an enlightened group of artists, artisans, publishers, connoisseurs, and patrons ensured that ukiyo-e standards would always remain several degrees above the level the populace considered acceptable. Politically and socially this was a feudal, almost totalitarian age; the masses accepted the voice of authority in most of their social activities. In their arts, too, they were willing to follow the lead of a loosely bound group of style dictators, much as women have sometimes followed Paris fashions in our own day. The result was two centuries of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, a continuous flow of high quality which was both the reflection and the arbiter of popular taste. And while one may give most of the credit for this phenomenon to the masters who directly produced ukiyo-e, one should not underestimate the power of the populace which supported it. What was even more critical than their taste was the inner need they felt for possessing fine art of their own. What makes the phenomenon of ukiyo-e even more curious is the fact that the Japanese populace was primarily obeying aesthetic instincts, rather than consciously anticipating the unique art form is was to support for such a long period. In general, this paper discusses the development of ukiyo-e during the Edo Period. It starts by describing the city – its city layout, population, warrior culture, and court culture – a major subject of ukiyo-e at that time. This is followed by the origins of this art form, themes and motifs, and techniques. The final part of this paper explains why such wood block prints became so popular in the Edo Period. The City of Edo The great majority of ukiyo-e were produced and marketed in the city of Edo. These prints were bought for the purchasers own enjoyment or to be taken back to the provinces as souvenirs for friends and family. Mass production of ukiyo-e first took place in Edo during the Kyoho period (1716-1736). Ukiyo-e emerged from a social milieu that centered on publishers and groups of cultured individuals who lived in the shitamachi area, particularly around Nihonbashi. From the middle of the eighteenth century, a time when Edo was becoming the cultural center of Japan, this area functioned as the hub of cultural activity not just of Edo but of all Japan. When Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616) came to Edo in 1590, he inherited little more than the vestiges of a castle built long before by Ota Dokan (1432-1486). With the implementation of Tokugawa political rule, this sleepy, historic area was destined to become the capital of all Japan. By the start of the eighteenth century, roughly one century after the establishment of the Tokugawa bakufu, the city of Edo already boasted a population of around one million inhabitants. The appearance of a city of such size was an event unprecedented in Japanese history (Matsunosuke, 1997). In the 1660’s the location of daimyo residences in Edo was in fact a miniature version of the position of the various daimyo within the country as a whole. By such means, the bakufu shrewdly stationed the forces of the tozama and fudai daimyo houses in ways that worked to its advantage. The bakufu governed the daimyo with an iron hand. Until the time of the fifth shogun, the bakufu frequently ordered fief transfers or confiscations (Tamotsu, 1961). As a result, daimyo residences were often moved within the city. Incessant changes in city planning also required construction of new wards or forcible relocation of old ones, giving the number of residences the bakufu bequeathed to its vassals, calculated at five-year intervals. Many characteristics of the city of Edo were the result of demographic factors (Matsunosuke, 1997). Building the metropolis had required a tremendous number of individuals with traditional skills and knowledge: house builders, plasterers, tatami makers, carpenters, tailors, armorers, surveyors, draftsmen, scholars, and legislators. Anyone with an outstanding ability sought his fortune in Edo. Competition was fierce, and fighting instincts surged to the fore. The majority of the Edo population was male. Male apprentices and clerks staffed the Edo branches of provincial stores. Most of these men returned to their home area after finishing their stint in Edo. Male laborers were required by daimyo for constructing Edo branches of local shrines and family temples. Samurai stationed in Edo were of course also exclusively male. In addition, Edo boasted a huge population of priests. Masterless samurai (ronin) and the self-styled street knights known as kyokaku contributed greatly to conflicts in the city. With the end of civil wars and with the peasantry under tight administrative control, ronin could no longer ramble freely about the villages. They too began to search for new forms of employment. A few members of this vast population went abroad; but many more slipped into Edo to become merchants, craftsmen, flute-playing monks (komuso), or kyokaku. The warrior population contributed much to the uniqueness of Edo. A large number of bannermen (hatamoto) – direct vassals and guardsmen of the bakufulived in the environs of the castle. A system of alternate attendance (sankin kotai) required daimyo and their retainers to spend alternate years in the capital and at their domains. Daimyo wives and children resided permanently in the capital. Thus at any given time, a large part of the military force of the nation was stationed in Edo. No matter how distant a daimyos domain lay from Edo, he took part in regular grand processions between his home area and the capital. The concentration of warriors in the city stimulated the emergence of a unique Edo economy. The presence of a large stratum of newly enfranchised warrior nobles required the procurement of a tremendous quantity of consumer goods (Matsunosuke, 1997). Supplying such goods was the responsibility of official merchants and artisans who streamed to the capital from all parts of the country. Edo thus became a consumer capital. Forced to live in the city, the daimyo, along with their retainers and families, enthusiastically set about developing their own culture. Both the ancient Kyoto court traditions and the warrior culture of the Kamakura bakufu (1185-1333) developed rapidly among the aristocratic warrior stratum. The habits and lifestyle of the daimyo and the high-ranking officialstheir food, housing, and clothing, their furnishings and utensils, even their styles of seating and deportmentwere in fact all warrior-style variations of the ancient customs, practices, and etiquette of the Kyoto court. Principles of warrior rule governed the rank or status of individuals and families in the feudal hierarchy. Rules were drawn up stipulating the forms a daimyo was required to follow. Social rank determined the shape and size of a daimyos Edo residence, the scale of his processions, and the kind of vehicles, furnishings, and clothing he was allowed to use. Distinctions of feudal rank were displayed to be immediately visible. These included the colors and designs of clothing, styles of architecture and materials used in buildings and gardens, and the methods and ingredients employed in manufacturing various goods consumed by the warrior. Even the borders of straw floor mats (tatami) in Edo castle varied according to the rank of the officials who sat on them. For this reason feudal culture – at its most typical, Edo warrior culture – Is often said to be a predominantly visual culture (Matsunosuke, 1997). Since attempts to strengthen ones military prowess was sure to evoke displeasure from the bakufu, many warriors instead built huge gardens or absorbed themselves in leisure pursuits. Within three or four generations, both the daimyo and the shogun were no longer country bumpkins: they had become a true upper-class nobility in both name and deed. Vestiges of gardens as they existed at Edo daimyo residences can still be found in Tokyo today. Examples include the Korakuen of the Mito house, the Hama Rikyfi of the Kofu Tokugawa, and the Rikugien at the Komagome villa of the daimyo Yanagisawa Yoshi- yasu. These parks, as well as maps of ponds and gardens at residences of the Togoshi Hosokawa, show that construction took place on a grand scale. Residents of such estates could enjoy leisurely strolls within the grounds or ride in pleasure boats on the large ponds. At such villas the Edo warrior nobility sought to revive the cultural life of Heian-period courtiers, who valued natural beauty and lived in natural surroundings. Origins of Ukiyo-e It is rare indeed for a single word to express within itself the changing concepts of an age. â€Å"Ukiyo† is such a word: in medieval Japan it appeared as a Buddhist expression which connoted first â€Å"this world of pain†, with the derived sense of â€Å"this transient, unreliable world† (Lane, 1962). Etymologically it thus meant â€Å"this fleeting, floating world†. However, for the newly liberated townsman of the seventeenth-century Japanese renaissance, â€Å"floating world† tended to lose its connotations of the transitory world of illusion, to take on hedonistic implications and denote the newly evolved, stylish world of pleasure – the world of easy women and gay actors and all the pleasures of the flesh (Lane, 1962). By the time the suffix -e (meaning â€Å"pictures†) had been added to form the new compound ukiyo-e (â€Å"floating-world pictures†) around the year 1680, this hedonistic significance had become predominant in the expression. Thus the subject of our book, ukiyo-e, meant something like the following to the Japanese of the age which engendered it: A new style of pictures, very much in vogue, devoted to depicting everyday life, particularly fair women and handsome men indulging in pleasure, or part of the world of pleasure -pictures, as often as not, of an erotic nature. But what brought about this new development in Japanese art, this revolutionary shift from the overworked themes of classical tradition to those of the workaday world? To understand the origin of the ukiyo-e, it is necessary to look far back into the past. The disruption of the period of the northern and southern courts in the fourteenth century followed by the Chinese renaissance in the fifteenth had meant a real break with ancient traditions. A reaction to the intervening Chinese school could not begin to set in until late in the Muromachi period. In addition, the unsettling wars of the period created a mood in which new ideas could arise, and in which the populace seems to have been less restrained socially than during the rigid Tokugawa regime. Art reflected its environment in the gradual emergence of genre paintings. While the new style did not strictly follow the narrative attitude of the Yamato-e scroll tradition, it was also far removed from the ethical approach of the Kano masters towards figure subjects (Paine and Soper, 1955). The style originated in the old capital of Kyoto, and among the works of the Kano artists who lived there are to be found some which depict and emphasize the contemporary scene in preference to an ennobling idealism. The new spirit was stimulated by Hideyoshis talent for spectacular display. This lowly but heroic figure liked to impress people. The great fete or tea-party at the shrine of Kitano in 1587 introduced a novel kind of popular entertainment. For the occasion Hideyoshi had placards set up in Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and Sakai inviting all to come irrespective of class or wealth. At the tea-party Hideyoshis treasures were ostentatiously exhibited. The next year he gave a great flower viewing party at the temple of Daigoji (Paine and Soper, 1955). The popular art of the period deals with masses of people, as though these joyful occasions had also impressed the artists. The following section describes ukiyo-e themes and motifs, which explains why the art was popular during the Edo Period. Ukiyo-e Woodblock Technique Ukiyo-e prints were produced as a result of the collaboration of the artist, the publisher, the master carver, and the printer’s shop. However, it was the artist who received credit for the piece in the end. First, publishers would start the procedure by engaging artists to design a print or sequence of prints. The artists may have a background on traditional styles of painting or they may have learned from style of other ukiyo-e masters while having training in the workshop (Fauntleroy, 1989). Many ukiyo-e artists were commissioned to produce novel compositions to embellish interiors of households or design customized surimono (greeting cards) for clients who could afford the lavishness of unique works of art. Once the artists had prepared hanshita-e (drawing), the precise size of the print for publishing, they would trace the outlines of hanshita-e on a piece of thin paper using black ink. The traced version would be relayed to master woodcutters, who would then translate the artist’s brushed composition into a board of wood using scrapers, chisels, and knives. They used fine-textured and very hard wood to make sure that even the most elaborate parts of the design imprinted in relief would last the pressure of hundreds of other printings. Then, master cutters would put the tracing face down on the wooden board. They would then carve away all wood from the surface excluding that indicating the outlines of the drawing of the artists. Since a design imprinted in relief will create a reverse image when put into print, wood cutters reversed tracing to come up with an image similar to the original conception of the artists. A registration mark was carved beyond the perimeter of the composition in the lower right-hand part of the board (Fauntleroy, 1989). The key block would then be sent to printers, who would finish a number of black-and-white impressions, approximately the quantity of colors to be used in the final print. They did not use a mechanical press familiar to European printers because it lacked the pressure needed for wood block impressions; rather the printer applied physical strength to the woodblock, paper, and baren. Then, the proofs would be sent back to the artist, who would inspect the wood block impression and indicate colors to be used. The proofs would be sent back to the woodcutting shop. After the completion of the carving, the key and color blocks would be turned over to the printers. Following the printing of the first color, the paper would be placed on top of a second block inked with a special color; this process would continue throughout the series of color blocks (Fauntleroy, 1989).