Ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e refers to both hand paintings and woodblock prints of the Edo period. Original hand drawing paintings were only-one-works, while woodblock prints were inexpensive because they could be printed in a series of plates, and were popular among the general public.
For woodblock prints, the painter, engraver, and printer divided their work to complete a single picture.
It was made by carving individual hairs by an engraver based on a picture drawn by an artist, and applying pigments one color at a time by a printer, then applying paper to the woodblock and layering the colors.
Ukiyo-e artists learned their skills through an apprentice system, and there were various schools, such as the Kano school and the Utagawa school.
The Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints@Tokyo is famous today.
Most of the subjects of Ukiyo-e involve the daily lives of commoners. Other typical subjects include pictures of Kabuki actors, profiles of beautiful women, and famous places.
How to make Ukiyo-e (from youtube)
How to make Great Wave (from youtube)
Woodblock prints have standard sizes for mass production.
For example, the famous "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" (1831-33) by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō" (1831-40) by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) are both "large format" size (25.3 x 37.0 cm). Although they are made by the same publisher (Hoeido), the paper quality of "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" is better and the size is slightly larger than that of Hiroshige's "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō". [1]
*There are two types of paper quality and two types of prints: High-quality printing and Standard printing.
Of the 46 prints in "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji", "the Great Wave" is still very popular and was adopted as the design for the visa section of the Japanese passport in 2020.
There are many museums in Japan that specialize in ukiyo-e prints, but in Tokyo, the Sumida Hokusai Museum and the Ota Memorial Museum of Art are excellent.
参考文献
[1] 「浮世絵細見」 浅野秀剛 講談社選書メチエ 2017年8月9日初版