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- prolific artists Hokusai and Hiroshige excelled in the genre of romantic landscape scenes, depicting seasonal themes of workers of all professions, portraying them with wonderful animation and gentle humour. Thousands of copies of views of Mount Fuji and the Tokaido Road, and the special atmosphere surrounding them, were made. TTte imagination of these two artists showed inexhaustible originality, and offers us a tremendous depiction of the past.
As craftspeople, the ukiyo-e artists were neither rich nor socially important. They worked fast and were paid a pittance for their designs.
It required a team effort to make a woodblock print: the artist who produced the image; the woodblock engraver who carved the cherry wood blocks; the printer who lined up the blocks, inked the relief and placed dampened paper on the block; and the publisher who financed and distributed the end product. The print runs were rarely limited in number and could range from one hundred to thousands. If the print was very popular, the woodblocks might wear out and be recarved for a new edition. A print shop could produce two hundred or more prints a day.
The ukiyo-e artists drew on four main sources for inspiration: beauties,
Kabuki actors, landscapes and historical or legendary events. Humour could often be found in the various illustrations, a reaction perhaps to the strong social pressures and controls of the time. (Japan was ruled by an increasingly paranoid dictatorship that made all woodblock prints subject to strict government censorship.) The prints offered a distinct taste for the erotic, the weird and even the ugly.
Bijin-ga, (pictures of beauties) offered tempting diversions in Edo Japans rigid society. Women of all vocations and classes were depicted in various settings, from cheery domestic sights (like mothers nursing their children) to very raunchy erotic prints known as shunga. The most popular female figures illustrated were the glamourous courtesans of the licensed brothel districts of Edo city, known as the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters, an area surrounded by high walls and a moat. The courtesans were ranked by price, beauty and training in such things as musical instruments, poetry and painting. The courtesan images not only reflect the Japanese ideal of feminine beauty, but also lavishly depict their elaborate coiffures and splendid kimonos and, as such, played an important role in the fashion conscious society of the Edo period. The print artists depicted single portrait images of courtesans walking the thoroughfares of the district, frequenting tea houses, on pleasure boats or in the apartments of brothels.
Kabuki actors were also an enormously popular subject for ukiyo-e print artists. Kabuki was a flamboyant theatre of dance, music, poetry and symbolism that maintained a high level of emotional tension and dealt freely in titillating scenes of evil plots, cruel murders, grotesque violence and blatant sexual scenes. With all its
OPPOSITE
38. Hirosada Utagawa
(c. 1810-64]
Kabuki Actor Nakamura Nanshi as Agamakidayu / Acteur Kabuki Nakamura Nanshi en Agamakidayu Osaka woodblock print
39 Toyokuni Utagawa
(1769- 1825)
Kabuki Actors Iwai Kumesaburo and Bando Mitsugoru II / Acteurs Kabuki Iwai Kumesaburo et Bando Mitsugoru II Woodblock print
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