Post 1 – 2025 Aesthetics Exploration – Japanese Woodblocks

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The Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock printing of Japan created by an ukiyo-e artist by the name of Hokusai shown above in late 1831. Woodblock Printing was originally invented in China during the Tang dynasty from 618-907 to print texts, images and patterns on textiles which then moved to paper. Woodblock printing later reached Japan in the late 700’s being used to reproduce foreign literature and the earliest example of printing known dates to 764 where an Empress Koken had small woodblock scrolls printed with Buddhist texts to accompany one million small wooden pagodas during her reign. This symbolized a token of thanks for the defeat of a rebellion at the time. Although woodblock printing started off as a method to print books and images, Ukiyo-e developed in Japan to print art.

Later, woodblock printing was used for Buddhist to print texts and images but due to mass production of printed books being expensive, printing remained in this realm in the eleventh century which didn’t hit the public market. Above is an example of a text produced by a movable type press Saga-bon. Woodblock printing then expanded from the 12^th to the 13^th century where many books were able to be printed and published. Woodblock printing made its mark in literacy in early Edo period, but it was during the late Edo period where ukiyo-e rose and depicted subjects base on actors, sumo wrestlers, women, landscapes and more. Multicolor woodblock printing called nishiki-e was developed by Suzuki Harunobu which helped influence ukiyo-e, the Japanese woodblock printing exemplified in the first picture. The ownership of the woodblock would act as a “copyright” at the time and legal ownership wasn’t a thing. This meant that the original ideas would be able to be built off of these woodblocks as publishers and people who purchased them would have control over its creation. Eventually, ukiyo-e declined due to printing technologies evolving.

Influences of Japanese woodblock printing also made its way to European artist. It was during the Meiji period where these woodblocks were purchased and well known in Paris. This occured in the 1800s where these blocks would provide inspiration and replication for artists like Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. Above is a picture of what the Japanese considered a beautiful woman to represent this art and bellow is a picture of Monet’s wife in a kimono show great influence from Japanese art.