Japanese Woodblocks Fine Art

Edo, late in the shogunate. A printer’s shop smells of mulberry paper and damp cherry wood, and a new sheet is lifted from the block.

Japanese woodblocks cover ukiyo-e and its Meiji and Taisho successors, into the twentieth century. Kabuki actor portraits. Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s 47 Ronin of 1847-48. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. Tsukioka Kogyo’s Noh drama scenes. Toyohara Chikanobu’s Jidai Kagami, the Mirror of the Ages, and his Sino-Japanese War triptychs, beside the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido. Add e-hon picture books, shunga, bijin-ga beauties and the 1946 Ranka-fu orchid prints, so subtle they pass for watercolor.

Each sheet took three pairs of hands: designer, carver, printer. Color came off the blocks and into the fibers of the paper.

Three men, one picture. Nobody sulked about credit, apparently.