In the late fifteenth century Portuguese and Spanish trading vessels came to Japan, introducing Christianity as well as the art of copperplate etching and other Occidental methods of drawing and printing. However, due to the strict ban on Christianity officially imposed by the shogunate in 1637, the learning of these techniques was discouraged because of their foreign and religious associations.
Until the middle of the seventeenth century, fine art, especially painting, had been the province of the elite classes—samurai, nobility, and priests. After Tokugawa Ieyasu set up the shogunate in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1603, a new class began to arise—merchants and townsmen—with its own demands for popular mass art. Woodblock prints began to be churned out as book illustrations, as broadsheets and advertisements, as albums of erotica and novels, as wall decorations and souvenirs of travels, and as simple scenes depicting contemporary manners and customs.
The heyday of this genre occurred from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, and the prints are known as ukiyo-e (Japan's antique woodblock prints, literally pictures of the fleeting world). Japan was still an isolated country much turned in upon itself, but the class of society that had recently come to the fore created a demand for mass-produced art. Ukiyo-e were definitely a product of the rapid social changes occurring among newly affluent city dwellers.
These woodblock prints of colorfully bedecked courtesans, flamboyantly dramatic Kabuki actors, and dramatically presented landscapes (especially those of Hiroshige and Hokusai) have been Japan's cultural ambassadors for decades. Even as recently as twenty years ago, when the Japanese government or the Cultural Affairs Agency was asked to mount a show of Japanese prints overseas, it invariably trotted out ukiyo-e as representatives of Japanese print art. Frankly these works, no matter how lovely one may consider them, have been the bane of our existence as dealers in contemporary Japanese prints. Not only have they convinced Western minds that coy geisha and grimacing actors are the symbols of Japan, but they have also come to be regarded everywhere as the sole representatives of Japan as "the land of the woodblock print." In the meantime, Japanese artists have moved far ahead, anticipating the twenty-first century, and these old cultural icons are no longer fitting to represent the Japanese print world. It is true, of course, that Japan has long been renowned for its artists' expertise in woodblock printing, but not to the exclusion of the multitudinous other techniques currently being used in the print world.
We will make the point numerous times, but this might as well be the first mention: the Japanese excel at what they choose to do. They have borrowed many things from other cultures, both Asian and Western, perfecting them and making them their own. Everything is grist for the collective national mind in every field of endeavor, and art is no exception.
The ukiyo-e print, in particular, which has made a worldwide impression, was the product of several people: an artist, a carver, a printer, and a publisher. The collaboration worked well. The artist provided the design (quite often suggested by the publisher, who was usually not only educated but also astute as to what would please the public); the carver pasted the design on the block and did the appropriate carving; the printer pulled the proofs; the publisher handled distribution. Ukiyo-e were extremely popular with the general Japanese public, but the formal art establishment regarded them simply as multiply reproduced pictures for the mass market and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. The editions were not numbered and even today it is guesswork to decide exactly how many were made originally.
With the diplomatic opening of Japan to the outside world in 1853 (with the famous "black ships" of Commodore Perry setting the tone) communication began to flow in two directions. Western painting and printing techniques, perspective, and color were of great interest to the heretofore isolated Japanese artist, while the charming and exotic ukiyo-e crossed the seas to become a hit in Europe, influencing such important Impressionist artists as Whistler, Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec. (It is interesting to note that many Japanese who traveled abroad in the twentieth century were immediately attracted to these European artists, probably because the strong line and perspective they were using reminded them of their own tradition.)
In North America in the early days of the twentieth century, three Americans were fundamentally responsible for the fact that today the Boston Museum of Fine Arts has more than 100,000 ukiyo-e among its holdings. Ernest Fenollosa, a native of Massachusetts and a teacher at Tokyo Imperial University, began to collect in great numbers in 1888. He encouraged his friend Dr. William Bigelow, a Boston surgeon, to become interested in ukiyo-e, and Bigelow bought thousands. In the 1920s when Frank Lloyd Wright came to Japan to design and build the Imperial Hotel, he also was smitten and raised large amounts of money among Boston art lovers to add to the already phenomenal museum collection.
By the time the Japanese realized that both Europeans and Americans had acquired ukiyo-e in enormous numbers and had taken them abroad, there were not so many left in Japan. In addition, the production of ukiyo-e had begun to decline since the demand in Japan had disappeared, basically because the society and mores that had been depicted in these prints were no longer in existence. Ironically, Westerners, particularly in Europe, were creating bold, new, colorful compositions in the Japanese style, while the Japanese were eagerly attempting to assimilate the interesting methods of Western-style painting and printmaking.
During the Meiji era (1868-1912) it was clear that the art of ukiyo-e was seriously on the wane. For a short while there was a burst of enthusiasm for works portraying the newly arrived foreigners in the ports of Yokohama and Nagasaki, and these enjoyed a certain popularity because of their "exoticism," but the genre itself fell into a decline.
Thereafter Japan fought two wars (with China and with Russia), and in the decade or so following 1894 ukiyo-e-style prints of victorious battle scenes were in demand. Along with the importation of Western arts, letters, and science during this period was the introduction of aniline dyes, so one can often distinguish these Meiji era prints by their garish red and purple tones.
In the early twentieth century two differently focused art movements arose at the same time. One produced shin-hanga (new prints) and the other sōsaku-hanga (creative prints). The only thing they basically had in common was the use of the woodblock technique.
Shin-hanga are connected with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (1885-1962), who attempted to breathe new life into the then moribund ukiyo-e. Finding sympathetic artists, he encouraged the ukiyo-e method of collaboration among artist, carver, printer, and publisher, as well as the traditional ukiyo-e imagery of idyllic landscapes and "beauties," stylized portraits of beautiful women.
The three best-known artists of the early twentieth century are Ito Shinsui (1898-1972), Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), and Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921). Their prints are softly sentimental and lovely, and they enjoyed great commercial success because they were produced expressly to meet the demand of foreigners who wanted an image of "traditional Japan." They also helped perpetuate the myth of Japan as a land of graceful kimonoed women, continuously falling cherry blossoms, and ruined castles with a moon hanging overhead.
The world of sōsaku-hanga, however, with the woodblock technique as its chief medium of work, diverged in several ways important enough to change the course of printmaking in Japan. Through travel and exposure to magazines and art books, Japanese artists gradually became inspired by the artistic revelations coming from Europe, namely, that an artist could design, carve, print, and distribute his work by himself; that prints could be made in small, numbered editions; and, most important of all, that print art was an art form in its own right and not looked down upon as a "reproduction technique."
The sōsaku-hanga artists began to gain confidence, enough to enter their works in overseas juried biennials. In 1951 at the First Sao Paulo Biennial, Japanese sculptures and paintings were passed over, and prizes were awarded to the printmakers Saito Kiyoshi and Komai Tetsuro. The Japanese art establishment was stunned. In 1955 when Munakata Shiko won the Grand