Genroku Era Art
During the Genroku Era woodblock printing came into popular use. Woodblock printing (or block printing) originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Ukiyo-e is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that was produced in Japan from the 17th century to the 19th century. The subjects of ukiyo-e were often influence by urban Edo life and culture. It was more direct and rawer than art favored by daimyō and often satirical and humorous, which one would never see in a daimyō estate. The prints were very popular amongst the Japanese merchants and the middle class of the time. They were popular with the artists also, because they could bring their works to a much larger audience.
The earliest successful woodblock prints were in the 1670s by Hishikawa Moronobu (1638 – 1714). His paintings and monochromatic prints of women were very popular. Color prints came later and by the 1760s full-color production became standard.
The centers for entertainment for the townspeople were the pleasure districts, designated areas for brothels along with other entertainment, tea houses, taverns, theaters, and geisha and courtesans. Kyoto’s pleasure district was Shimabara; Edo’s pleasure district was Yoshiwara. The pleasure districts had high-ranking courtesans who entertained philosophers, poets, writers, artists, musicians and incognito aristocrats. One habitué of Yoshiwara was the Buddhist monk turned pleasure-seeker and author Asai Ryoi, who in his Ukiyo Monogatari (Tales of the Floating World), used the term ukiyo, which came from Buddhism denoting the impermanence and fleeting nature of human pleasures, to describe a bohemian concept of forgetting reality, of existing for the moment, living the life of the pleasure district to the full, singing songs, and drinking sake “like an empty gourd on the surface of the water going with the flow.” The term stuck and ukiyo-e came to mean “pictures of the floating world.”
Ukiyo-e artists produced woodblock prints and painting of female beauties, kabuki actors, and sumo wrestlers, as well as scenes depicting historical events and folk tales, travels and landscapes, prostitutes and erotica, popular actors, and everyday life scenes. Religious imagery sometimes was treated with irreverence and symbols were used that ordinary people could understand. One can see a resemblance between ukiyo-e and manga.
Two related areas of ukiyo-e were bijin-ga and shunga. Bijin-ga (“beautiful person picture”) is a term for pictures of beautiful women, especially in ukiyo-e woodblock printing. It was one of the central themes. Shunga is a term for erotic art. Translated literally, shunga means picture of spring; “spring” is a common euphemism for sex. Viewer discretion is advised.
Some of the most important artists of ukiyo-e painted bijin-ga as well as other works. The early works of Chōbunsai Eishi (1756 – 1829) were of courtesans and in later years his women grew taller and more slender, until their heads were about one-twelfth the height of the figures. He also illustrated shunga books. Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1753 –1806) is best known for his bijin ōkubi-e “pictures of beautiful women with large-heads”, as well as nature pictures. Utamaro became very popular in France and reference to “Japanese influence” by Impressionists often refers to his work. Torii Kiyonaga (1752 – 1815) headed the Torii school, an Edo school of ukiyo-e painting and printing, that painted actors and kabuki theater signboards and other promotional materials. Isoda Koryūsai (1735 – 1790) was a rōnin (masterless samurai) turned ukiyo-e print designer and painter, who made prints of life in the pleasure districts.
Toward the end of the Edo Period, the greatest ukiyo-e artists were Katsushika Hokusai and Hiroshige, who were best remembered for their landscapes. Hokusai did the Great Wave off Kanagawa and Hiroshige is known for his series works such as The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. Ukiyo-e helped form the West’s perception of Japanese art during this time when Japonism influenced Impressionists such as Degas, Manet, and Monet and Post-Impressionists such as Van Gogh and Art Nouveau artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec. Ukiyo-e artwork became collector’s items in West. However, ukiyo-e works declined greatly after the deaths of Hokusai and Hiroshige and the changes that occurred in the Meiji Restoration after 1868.