| "Ukiyoe" You may come across a name "Sharaku" even while living in a country outside Japan. For those who are not familiar, Sharaku is an artist famous for his ukiyoe, or a Japanese woodblock prints. Today we'd like to give you a little more information on this unique and beautiful art. The original ukiyoe was painted by hand, which was impossible to mass-produce and was very highly valuable. It was mainly appreciated among the aristocracy and high-ranked samurais. However, the printing board skills were developed from Edo period (1603-1867) and the paintings began to be published in large volumes. Ukiyoe often painted popular kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, beautiful ladies, various regional sights, and scenes from people's daily lives. These paintings were sold at around 300-yen in current value of money and came to be appreciated among ordinary folks quickly. In particular, paintings of beautiful ladies and kabuki actors were very popular and appreciated much like today's posters and photographs of a star. Ukiyoe takes four steps to complete. First of all, to cater to people's demand, "hanmoto", or present equivalent of a publisher, investigates the popular trend in life. Then he requests an artist to make a design based on his investigations. An engraver carves the drawing in to a print block, which is used by an artisan to print the Ukiyoe. The printing color of ukiyoe was originally limited to black by using Chinese ink, but later underwent a change to more colorful prints due to the development of advanced printing techniques with time. The very origin of Ukiyoe may be traced back to the work of Moronobu Hishikawa, called "Mikaeribijin" (Beauty Looking over Her Shoulder). Following Moronobu, six prominent ukiyoe painter became widely acclaimed, including Harunobu Suzuki, Kiyonaga Torii, Utamaro Kitagawa, Shyaraku Toshusai, Hokusai Katsushika and Hiroshige Utagawa. Some of their works were introduced to overseas and highly admired. In particular, it is well known that Hiroshige's ukiyoe had a great influence on a then young artist named Vincent van Gogh. Here's a simple introduction to different kinds of ukiyoe and their representative works. -1. "Yakusha-ye" portrays a kabuki actor. It is said that yakusha-ye developed as a signboard picture for theaters. As mentioned above, designs of kabuki actor were very popular among the people. Syaraku is the famous artist for this type of prints. His works are highly acclaimed overseas, on equal scale with those of Rembrandt and Velazquez. -2. "Fukei-ga" is a landscape paintings of Japan. It would not be too much to say that a whole new category was established in ukiyoe world by these fukeigas. In this category, "The Fuji 36 views" of Hokusai and "Fifty-three Tokaido Stages" of Hiroshige are outstanding representative works of fukei-ga. These portraits not only depict the beauty of the landscape itself, but also on the atmosphere of travel, where one may find a travelerfs emotion skillfully visualized with outstanding techniques. -3. "Bijin-ga", is a print treating beautiful ladies as subject, such as a courtesan or a lady at the tea house. Utamaro is the prominent artist in this genre. Bijin-ga is also often used to advertise a new kimono of the shop. A mysterious ukiyoe painter, Sharaku will be introduced more in detail in the next issue.  Ukiyoe Gallery |