Ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e is a Japanese art form that peaked during the 17th and 19th centuries. Its artists created woodblock prints and paintings of feminine beauty, kabuki performers, and sumo wrestlers, historical and folk tale themes, travel sceneries and landscapes, flora and fauna, and eroticism, among other subjects. “Pictures of the Floating World” is how the name “ukiyo-e” is translated.

Emergence of ukiyo-e (late 17th – early 18th centuries)

A scenario in which eleven male and female individuals entertain themselves is portrayed on the bybu screen. A blind man and a group of ladies play shamisens in front of a four-panel bybu screen with a landscape painted on it on the left. A group of men and women play the sugoroku board game to their right.

The Hikone screen may be the oldest surviving ukiyo-e work.

Colour prints (mid-18th century)

Color was applied by hand for specific commissions even in the first monochrome prints and booklets. Tan-e prints, hand-tinted with orange and occasionally green or yellow, were used to meet the need for colour in the early 1800s. These were followed in the 1720s by a craze for pink-tinted beni-e and, subsequently, the urushi-lacquer-like e’s ink. The benizuri-e were the first colour printing achievements in 1744, employing many woodblocks—one for each colour, including the early beni pink and vegetable green.

*Two Lovers Beneath an Umbrella in the Snow*
Harunobu, c. 1767

*Hinazuru of the Chōjiya*
Koryūsai, c. 1778–80

Peak period (late 18th century)

While the late 18th century witnessed difficult economic times, ukiyo-e reached its peak in terms of quantity and quality, especially during the Kansei period (1789–1791). The ukiyo-e of the Kansei Reforms period focused on beauty and harmony, but when the reforms failed and tensions mounted, the ukiyo-e of the following century disintegrated into decadence and discord, culminating in the Meiji Restoration of 1868.