Japanese Prints [antikvár]

Japanese prints Japanese prints have been popular in the West ever since they were first imported, more than a hundred years ago. They form one of the most easily oppreciat-ed and most immediately enjoyoble orts of the Far East. They were produced by hand. Woodblock engraving and printing had been in standord use in China and Japan for many centuries and the skilled craftsmen needed only to perfect their techniques, not to invent them. The artist, working from o rough sketch, would produce a design in black and white, using brush and ink on thin paper. This was pasted foce downwards onto a block of seasoned mountain cherry, planed along the groin. The engraver cut away the wood around the lines, leaving these in relief. Ink was applied to the raised lines and proofs taken by laying dompen-ed paper on the prepared block and exerting pressure by hand, using a pod of twisted bamboo fibres enclosed in a bamboo sheath which was kept pliable with a little oil. From these proofs further blocks were cut, one for eoch colour. At this point the skills of the printer took over. To maintain correct register of the colours, to keep an even impression in oreos of flat colour, to gro-date and shade the colours by wiping the block before printing, or sometimes by exerting lighter pressure, called for a high level of craftsmanship. The organization and supen/ision of the activities of the artist, engraver and printer were provided by the publisher, who was frequently also the owner of the sales outlet. It is not known how much contact the artists had with the printers and engravers who worked on their designs, but one must suspect that this was very va ria ble. We do not even known how much influence the artists had on the choice of colours for the prints. Certainly the colours were sometimes indicated by the artist on copies of the proofs before the colour blocks were engraved. However, one often finds prints, of apparently the same date, which have marked variations in colour. How for these were produced in consultation with the artist and how far bythe printer and publisher alone is undetermined. The prints derive from a popular art, susceptible to the altering whims and foshions of the urban populace of Edo (now Tokyo! during the Tokugawa period 1)615-18681. By reflecting these changing fashions they throw light on the everyday life of a unique and, to our eyes, exotic culture, which now no longer exists. Intense commercial rivalry between competing firms of publishing houses, combined with the skills and inventiveness of the Japanese craftsmen, brought the technique of woodblock printing to the highest level ever attained anywhere in the world. Not only was the printing superb, but the Japanese of that era seem to have had an instinctive understanding of the art of graphic design. Their method, using the flowing line ond brood expanses of flat colour, provides an immensely satisfying treatment of the subjects portrayed. Most of the Japanese prints illustroted in this volume were designed by artists of the Uk/yo-e school, which hod its main flowering from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries. Other schools and other eras in Japan hod theirown distinctive graphic styles but these constitute separate fields of study. The term Ukiyo-e has been translated as "pictures of the floating world'. To the Joponese, ukiyo Ithe floating worldl wos a word conveying several meanings. The earliest of these, never completely lost, expressed a Buddhist concept of sadness ot the fleeting, transitory nature of existence. By about 1680 the term had taken on more positive, subsidiary meanings. The "floating world- became o particulor style of life, the shiftless existence of the hedonist and the transitory noture of his pleasures. It thus took on overtones of "risqué", "up-to-date" and "living for the moment, not caring what tomorrow may bring*. In Edo, the Japanese capital, these drifting pleasure-seekers abounded, as did the haunts where their wants could be met. The authoritarian government under the dynastic Tokugawa family of military dictators required that oil provincial nobles should reside in Edo for four months of each year, and should keep up appropriately grand (and expensive! residences for themselves and their retinues. These retinues of samurai ond other retainers formed a pool of relatively under-employed, upper-class men, who looked to the city to provide them with omusements. At the same time, the merchont classes, although low in the feudol hierarchy of castes, were prospering and becoming wealthy under the prevailing peaceful conditions. Restrictive laws, designed to keep the merchants in their place, prevented any large-scole, lavish or ostentatious show of their wealth, which was increasingly used for more immediate if less durable investment in entertc linmentand frivolity. Such pastimes may have been debauched and hedonistic drinking and wenching with their friends in the licensed brothel quarters of the Yoshiwaro; or more innocent pastimes organizing picnics to view the cherry trees in blossom, visiting the theatre for the latest drama, taking part in the round of religious festivals or spending a convivial evening with o poetr/ club. All such events were seized on by the print artists as material for their prints. No matter what took the current fancy of the Edoite, a stack of prints would soon go on sale, either as mementos, as cheap decorotions for the household or as vicarious substitutes for an event that was missed or was too expensive.