Ukiyo-e Diptychs, Triptychs, Polyptychs - The Expanding Horizon

Triptychs of Japanese woodblock prints - that is, prints composed to be seen as three co-joined panels (the commonest of the multi panel format) - have been part of the ukiyo-e scene since the eighteenth century. Specifically, these compositions allow artists to make designs that are more ambitious and products that are more expensive. The use of the format is not however random. At different points in history, the triptych format has been chosen to make quite specific genre pieces - its choice by the artist is rarely on a whim and most usually follows the fashion at the time and as with all fashions, the format tends to fall out of favour.

Kuniyasu, Bando Mitsugoro in Futatsu Chocho Kuruwa Nikki, 1824

Masanobu (1686 - 1764) perhaps introduced the triptych format as a means of showing the women of the three cities of Japan, all on one sheet, to be divided later if required. In the eighteenth century, the paper size most commonly used was the hosoe (12” x 6”) and it is not until later in the century that the oban and then the true oban triptych begin to appear. Utamaro (1753 - 1806) developed the triptych format with sublime processional oban prints of beautiful women of exquisite delicacy. It is not until the nineteenth century that the format really takes off in popularity, particularly with the pre-eminent rise of the Utagawa School under Toyokuni I (1769 - 1825). It is with Toyokuni’s portraits of actors on the kabuki stage that the multi-sheet format becomes a popular subject of mass production. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the classic kabuki actor triptychs of Kunisada, Kuniyasu, Kuniyoshi and others adhered to quite strict rules. Whereas Utamaro’s processional pieces had many figures in a frieze-like row, Utagawa kabuki prints tended to be influenced more by the stage itself than the history of art. Hence it is most common to respect the singularity of the performer, (on stage the actors tend not to have contact with each other), and in the prints each actor tends to occupy a single sheet. There is commercial advantage to this since single sheets, double sheets or triptychs could be sold without spoiling the effect of the entire composition. The Kuniyasu triptych of 1824 in the current exhibition at the Toshidama Gallery is a good case in point and typical of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The colours are still in the palette of the eighteenth century and each actor discreetly occupies their own sheet. The space is shallow - frankly that of the kabuki stage - and the stage furniture is indicative only. Crucially the actors do not touch or overlap and hence the middle sheet for example stands alone as a print in its own right. This convention seeps into most ukiyo-e production of the period and the superb Kunisada triptych of three women under a cherry tree, whilst not a theatre piece, nevertheless adheres to theatrical convention.

Kunisada, Yozakura Cherry Blossom at Night, 1848

One of the true innovators of woodblock prints in the nineteenth century was Utagawa Kuniyoshi, a colleague of Kunisada. His break with tradition comes with his total mastery of the musha-e, or warrior and hero triptych. In an astonishing series of works from the 1820’s to the 1840’s Kuniyoshi was able to wring every drop of creativity from the oban triptych format, forcing his warrior characters onto the backs of giant snakes, into the teeth of monstrous spiders or else being sucked into the depths of the ocean by ghost armies. These prints completely break with convention since they are conceived on a scale and format that may owe much to the tradition of European easel painting. The lavish and complex compositions use real space and scale and make no concession to the individual sheet. The separate sheets were only retained because of the limitations in wood block size available at the time. Curiously there were few imitators of his boldness although there were plenty of panoramic war scenes of samurai armies mustering on hillsides or fording rivers.

Kuniyoshi, Chushingura Act 11, 1851

In the meantime, as the century progressed, Kunisada had taken the kabuki theatre print as his primary market and was attacking the conventions of that genre with similar vigour. The print illustrated below  is a curious halfway house between the traditions of Toyokuni and the experiments of Kuniyoshi. Here we see three characters on the kabuki stage, one perhaps fording a river but set against a painted backdrop. The figures here are still occupying their separate panels but the print bursts with a new energy and vibrant colours.

Kunisada, Imoro Hikochichi, 1850

The legacy of Kuniyoshi is also evident in his most gifted student Yoshitoshi. In the superb triptych of Hideyoshi unseating a rival we see not only the influence of Kuniyoshi’s interest in the European renaissance, but also his disregard for the ordered triptych. In this masterful piece the whole scene is laid out in the European manner; the right hand sheet, for example, makes no sense at all as an individual print and like most of Kuniyoshi’s work in the field, all three sheets are required to read and complete the narrative.

Yoshitoshi, Tokichiro's First Battle at Fujikawa, 1869

Of course, the artist who most challenged the triptych convention in the late nineteenth century is Toyohara Kunichika. Kunichika, aware of the waning popularity of both kabuki and woodblock prints in the late nineteenth century more or less reinvented the form with sweeping panoramas of sparse imagery, portrait heads against blank backgrounds and daringly sparse compositions. This cinematic approach remains strikingly modern and is perhaps the last great individual attempt to revive the format. Kunichika’s late triptychs are among the best artefacts of Japanese art - bold, confident and uniquely individual. His late series of New Plays at the Meiji Theatre are outstanding pieces and helped not only to revive woodblock printing in his lifetime but, with his collaboration with kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro, went some way towards ensuring the survival of kabuki itself.

Kunichika, Kabuki Scene

I suppose that the last great gasp of the triptych format came with the Sino-Japanese war of 1894. In the absence of photography, woodblock prints filled the public’s thirst for information and souvenirs of the the new Imperial victories over the Chinese. The Japanese were avid collectors of this new genre, called senso-e. After two centuries of refinement, woodblock technique was at a peak of sophistication and the artists were able to produce modern looking pieces - mainly in triptych form - to satisfy demand for news of victories from the front. Some of these are very fine indeed. The new style of watery, mist-filled scenes using special effects to evoke the lingering smoke of battle; the novel depiction of modern high explosives; and the refined use of western perspective in set piece panoramas was very successful. Many Meiji artists produced senso-e including Chikanobu, Gekko and Kiyochika. There were also some hugely notable artists who were able to flower briefly during the conflict only to be lost when the dying art of woodblock printing was replaced by photography and lithography.

Bairin, Senso-e of a Naval Battle, 1894

As we have seen, the triptych changed during the nineteenth century to adapt to new fashions; the diptych format - two vertical oban sheets joined on the long edge - seems only to have been really popular mid century and mainly in the hands of the artist Kunisada. The oban diptych developed primarily as a means to illustrate the kabuki stage and in the 1840’s - 1850’s it was widely used for that purpose. I can think of very few musha-e (warrior prints) in this format but for the stage it remained an ideal format, as this striking Kunisada diptych of Benkei and Yoshitsune on Gojo bridge demonstrates. In Osaka, which had developed a parallel style to its neighbour in Edo, the chuban diptych became a popular theatre print format but in the hands of artists like Yoshitaki, polyptychs of five, six, or seven sheets became common, enabling the artists to show complex staging and many different characters but remaining within the convention of the kabuki scene overall.

Kunisada, Fight on Gojo Bridge in the Snow, 1852

Kunisada, Komuso Monk and Girl 1830's

Perhaps the most distinctive format is the vertical diptych or kakemono-e. This is two oban sheets joined at their short edges to form a long strip. This format derives from the antique pillar print of the eighteenth century, designed to go in niches or act as scrolls that were hung on the wall (unlike conventional ukiyo-e prints that were not framed or wall hung but kept loose or in albums). The original kakemono-e derive from the early seventeen hundreds but fell out of favour and were revived in the nineteenth century. Eisen (1790 - 1848) developed the format to carry prints of notable Edo beauties, using an unconventional 1:6 head ratio to fill the space. Kunisada also produced kakemono-e of bijin, or beautiful women, but also on occasion, genre pieces like the one illustrated of a well known kabuki scene.

Yoshitoshi, Rin Chu 1886

The true master of the nineteenth century vertical diptych though is Yoshitoshi. Yoshitoshi produced sixteen vertical oban diptychs during the 1880’s which are the pinnacle of his career. They are lavishly drawn, designed, printed and carved and are among the best ukiyo-e pieces of the second half of the nineteenth century. The beautiful print illustrated depicts an episode from the Suikoden. Rin Chu has been detained in a remote army camp, the minister of war wishes him dead and for it to look like an accident. The guard Riku sets fire to the guard house but Rin Chu was not inside having taken shelter in a nearby temple. He kills Riku and Yoshitoshi pictures here the aftermath of the scene. The print is a masterpiece of confident design. Yoshitoshi revels in the sparse landscape and the understated violence of the story.

 Rarely, artists stepped outside of these formats; the gallery is fortunate to have acquired a huge and important six sheet Kunichika print based on the format of a popular backgammon-like game of the Edo period called sugoruku, (this piece will be in our 2012 Kunichika series exhibition later in the year). Generally speaking, Edo and Meiji artists used the available formats - unlike western artists, these formats are imposed by paper manufacturers or block sizes - to explore and innovate within given constraints. One can only marvel at the lengths they went to in stretching their imaginations and the technical ability of their printers to create such varied and inspirational works. Ukiyo-e Polyptychs: The Expanding Horizon is showing at the Toshidama Gallery until 20th July 2012.

Kunichika, Sugoruku Board

One Hundred Years of Ukiyo-e at Toshidama Gallery

Kunisada, Iwai Shijaku as an Oiran, 1823

Japanese woodblock prints had been fairly commonplace on the Edo scene by the turn of the nineteenth century. What we now term the ‘classical school’; that is, the artists that were satellites of Moronobu, Utamaru, Haronobu and Masanobu, were becoming old and the work - it could be argued - had lost some of the spring and originality of the preceding fifty years. By 1800, the classical bijin portrait and group portrait was well established; attenuated, stylish women against sparse backgrounds in limpid poses and limited palettes were the common trend, although the minor genres of warrior prints and, more strongly, kabuki prints were visible. Edo itself was undergoing huge convulsions; in 1800, 10% of the population lived in towns, upper class (samurai) wealth and power was diminishing and the upwardly mobile artisans and merchants (the middle classes) were increasingly powerful and wealthy. The result of these upheavals was a growing demand for luxuries and diversions, among these were the rapidly expanding kabuki theatre which became the principal client base for the ukiyo-e artists, the red light districts, especially the Yoshiwara and the consumption of affordable woodblock prints in large numbers - collected, disposed of or pasted to the walls of people’s houses.

Kuniyoshi, Tomoye-gozen struggling with Musashi Saburoemon Arikuni, 1840

How did the artists, publishers and printers respond to new demand? Certainly by becoming all but partners with the kabuki theatre trade - souvenirs and fan prints were an enormous market - but also the early century saw the rise of other, important genres. The history and warrior print (musha-e) became popular especially after the phenomenal success of the Kuniyoshi print series The 108 Heroes of the Suikoden as people started to read the great sagas and historical novels that were being newly written or republished. As travel between the big population centres became more commonplace and less restricted, travel prints - landscapes and guide books - became hugely popular and indeed, Hiroshige built his entire career and subsequent worldwide fame on his various series of prints of the Tokaido Road between Edo and Kyoto. So widespread did the adulation of kabuki stars and the vast consumption of woodblock prints become, that in the early 1840’s the government imposed a series of prohibitions known as the Tempo Reforms that banned the depiction or identification of actor’s faces and names as well as severe restrictions on the types of historical print produced for fear that the populace might interpret prints as being politically critical by analogy. Far from killing off the ukiyo-e industry, these prohibitions encouraged artists to be more creative and to diverge into genre pieces that stood in for theatrical themes - innocuous series of prints that happened to have well known actors in them, unnamed but identifiable by their features. Others started the genre of the mitate: complex, punning images where the initial meaning disguised other layers of meaning through reference and allusion.

Kunisada, Bando Mitsugoro as a Samurai Subduing a Tiger, 1810's

Reaction to the Tempo Reforms allowed ukiyo-e artists to stretch the audience and the subject matter of the art; in doing so styles changed and other important incentives to buy, such as deluxe techniques like burnishing or scattered mica and expensive multi-coloured triptychs became more common and through demand, more affordable. This rapid change during the mid nineteenth century meant that the way the prints looked changed radically too. Important industrial advances bought about by trade meant that previously expensive colours such as blue became common as the import restrictions allowed Prussian and Dutch pigments into the country. Comparing for example an early nineteenth century print by Toyokuni I such as the actor with tiger illustrated left, with Kuniyoshi’s Products of Land and Sea of 1850 many of these developments become quickly apparent.

Kuniyoshi, Auspicious Desires of Land and Sea 47, 1852

The colour in the Toyokuni is restricted to a limited, traditional palette of yellows and browns whereas the Kuniyoshi sparkles with colours more redolent of western art - there is no shortage here of reds and blues and greens. Further excesses abound - the very large number of extra colours for example; there only three or four printings on the Toyokuni compared to the dozen or so blocks used on the Kuniyoshi. The Kuniyoshi, (immediately post Tempo) is a mitate - the print stands in for something else. The Toyokuni on the other hand shows a named actor in character with no cartouche, no background and no extra detail. But it is the manner of the print that is so different. Toyokuni’s is drawn with quick, flowing lines - the tiger here is not leaping from the page but recalls more the art of China… it is a drawing of another drawing, and the block cutting is brief and sinuous - fewer lines here describe less than the realistic, descriptive, labour intensive blocks of the Kuniyoshi. Why so? Money principally; there was more money for the publishers and printers and hence more freedom for the artist to play with realism whilst at the same time avoiding the restrictions of the law. But still both prints are about storytelling and visual narrative. This is still an art with something to say - there is no suggestion at this point in time that the public were in the mood for buying an artist’s work for its own sake - there are no, (or precious few) still life or nude subjects from the artists of Edo.

Yoshitoshi, 100 Aspects of the Moon - Mount Otawa Moon, 1886

As kabuki reached its peak of popularity towards the Meiji revolution of 1868, woodblock printing too continued to prosper but with the formal opening of free trade with the west and a huge cultural shift towards modernisation, the changes in ukiyo-e that had begun earlier in the century continued to gather pace. Subject matter became varied, technique became more lavish and with the new generation of artists of the 1870’s, the drawing style and the spatial conventions became increasingly westernised. In an artist like Yoshitoshi, the eventual fin-de-siecle hybrid of the two cultures starts to take shape. In his great series of the 1890’s, 100 Phases of the Moon, Yoshitoshi uses traditional Japanese themes but depicts the subjects in an almost wholly European way. This same curious mixing of styles is even more evident in the work of the late Edo artist Ogata Gekko. Some artists, happy to use the technological benefits of free trade but uncomfortable with the rapid abandonment of traditional culture created an individual style that seemed to defy both prevailing trends. The late work of Toyohara Kunichika is such an example. In his triptychs and long series of the 1890’s he produced works of modernist brevity but undeniable Japanese authenticity. Going back once again to the work of Toyokuni and Kunisada of the 1810’s it is possible to see how this wonderful and sophisticated art form which (despite the efforts of later academics to suggest otherwise) has its roots solely in popular culture, developed to become the great art of Japan of the nineteenth century - able to reinvent itself and absorb new technologies and privations; and it was really only defeated by the invasion of photographic and lithographic technology in the final years of the century.  The poignant photograph of an elderly Kunichika staring into the lens of one of the new cameras is witness to his own acknowledgment of the demise of the woodblock print.

Toyohara Kunichika in 1897

Toshidama Gallery is showing twenty one prints from nineteenth century Japan with examples from every decade. From the sparse works of the early century to the visual and technical excesses of Kyosai, the show charts the rise and fall of the nineteenth century Japanese woodblock print. One Hundred Years of Ukiyo-e runs for six weeks until the 1st June 2012.

The Brilliance of the Osaka School

Kunikazu, Soga Monogatari

For many years the brilliance of the Osaka School woodblock artists of Japan has been occluded by their more popular and populous Edo cousins from the Utagawa School in what is present day Tokyo. Happily the situation is now changing and renewed enthusiasm in the Osaka woodblock artists can be seen in publications and National exhibitions.

Osaka prints have always been a refined taste; partly the art has a particular style of drawing that can seem strange to people used to the thinner features and more direct style of Edo prints. Perhaps also there is a lingering sense that Osaka, or Kamigata style is somehow provincial - unsophisticated and less refined. Only a casual study of the prints themselves reveal that these prejudices are unfounded. Osaka prints are more or less uniformly a revelation to the ukiyo-e enthusiast. The designs, once dismissed as unsophisticated or inbred reveal themselves to be exquisitely calligraphic and commanding and the skills of the block cutters and printers unparalleled.

Shigeharu, Nakamura Utaemon III

Osaka prints deal almost uniquely with the subject of the kabuki theatre and the actors who visited the province. The characteristic brilliance of the printing and the lavishness of the designs can be put down to the specific class of the consumer and the environment of the city at that time in the nineteenth century. Kabuki was an intermittent visitor to Osaka at the beginning of the nineteenth century but became firmly established with increasing visits from the kabuki superstars of Edo. The wealthy merchants and artisans of the city became enthusiasts and formed coteries, sometimes called fan clubs, sometimes called clapping clubs, to indulge their passion for individual actors and performances. Because of their relative wealth, and their own artistic ability, these small cliques entered into the production of eulogies, poems, woodblock prints and sometimes plays in a way unique to the culture at that time. The result, as far as ukiyo-e is concerned was the production (and preservation) of some of the finest and most lavish woodblock prints ever produced.

Osaka was the second largest city in Japan in the nineteenth century. Kabuki was the expression of a population’s desires, fantasies, arts and culture - a truly great art, but also a truly populist art - despised by the authorities precisely because it wielded such power over the entire population. The ukiyo prints of actors and performances, of the courtesans and the theatre district are the most complete representation of Japanese culture of the time and they show us not only the events that transpired but also the preoccupations and emotions of a people at a particular moment in history. Kabuki and its associated cultures occupied not only an outsider’s view of cultural life but were quite physically outside the official jurisdiction - kabuki theatres in Osaka were required to be situated on a remote canal bank opposite the red light district. The actors and performers occupied a similarly outsider position - kabuki actors although very wealthy through patronage were forbidden to communicate with the samurai class or enfranchised citizens, their movements were severely restricted and they were closely watched by the authorities. All of this created the fertile grounds for the production of great and deeply felt art and culture; there are cultural equivalents here to the ballet and opera scene of Paris in the late nineteenth century and the demi-monde of post impressionists who frequented the stage doors and perhaps the English Renaissance theatre and the great writers and poets and coterie societies that produced figures such as Sir Phillip Sidney.

From the point of view of the visual arts in Osaka, the most fascinating aspect is the emergence of the fan clubs. The study of these clubs by writers such as Dean Schwaab has enlightened no end our knowledge and understanding of Osaka prints. The members of these clubs were all wealthy citizens, respectable but also devotees of the kabuki theatre and the pleasure quarter. They were also the main market for the extraordinary deluxe and surimono-type prints that are so typical of the Osaka style.

Hirosada, Ichikawa Ebizo V as the Warrior Akushichibyoe Kagekiyo

The unique aspect of many of the Osaka artists is their amateur status. In the current exhibition at the Toshidama Gallery there are works by  ten artists of which only one, Shigeharu, is likely to have made a living solely from his own work. The others were involved in publishing or trades and many of these exceptional pieces achieve their beauty precisely because they are, by and large, free from the pressures and constraints of the commercial publishing industry; this applies not only to the very uncommercial lavishness of the prints themselves but also to the thought and care that has gone into the drawing and the design. From the collector's point of view, there are very few artists who produced more than a handful of prints; it has been estimated that the entire production of the Osaka printmakers is less in number and editions than one single artist such as Kuniyoshi in Edo. So hermetic were these small groups that in scholarship it still cannot be precisely determined whether the work of several artists is not in fact the work of a single artist using different names. It is only recently that it has been established that Sadahiro and Hirosada, for example are one artist and not artist and pupil. This makes the collecting of Osaka prints extremely satisfying; print runs are typically small, editions typically lavish. It is possible to collect a substantial number of the total output of an artist such as Hirosada which would be unthinkable with many of his Edo contemporaries.

When looking at many of these prints some features stand out immediately; size being the most obvious. Virtually all prints made in Edo in the eighteenth and nineteenth century were on the oban size of paper (roughly 36cm x 25cm), while the majority of deluxe Osaka prints were produced on the much smaller chuban size (the oban sheet cut in half along its long side). The other striking feature of Osaka prints is the lavish use of deluxe techniques, particularly the use of metals. To quote Dean Schwaab:

Munehiro, Two Kabuki Actors in the Hollow of a Tree

The products of these master technicians are the pinnacle of the printer’s art: a small area of garment, for example, may be decorated with embossed patterns, overprinted with colour that has been carefully graded by hand when applied to the block, and then further overprinted with complex metallic brocade designs. These many planes of design combined with the heavy, reflective quality of the metallic pigments give these densely coloured compositions a three dimensional quality that is unique.

A good example of these extraordinary refinements is the Hasegawa Munehiro, Two Kabuki Actors in the Hollow of a Tree from 1860. The inside of the trunk is encrusted with expensive gold metallic powder, the details of the costume are tipped with silver, the blacks are richly burnished, the scroll and the white parts of the dress are embossed with patinated fabric. The Yoshitaki, tetraptych of the Soga Brothers is similarly treated, and the first figure on the right is encrusted with silver and pattern, the metallics looking like applied jewels they are so thick and lavish. The exhibition at the Toshidama gallery contains a number of deluxe or surimono-type prints from the height of the main period of production in Osaka. Very fine too though are the precursors of what Schwaab refers to as the first and second period. I’m thinking here of the Ashiyuki portrait from 1830 which bears still the characteristics of the Utagawa School but nevertheless uses deluxe techniques on the costume and the sword or the beautiful and delicate Yoshikuni, Nakamura Shikan II.

In the woodblock prints of the Osaka School, it is fair to say that there is a distillation of the very best of ukiyo-e design and production. These hugely collectible pieces will become increasingly scarce and already, deluxe or rare pieces can command over a thousand dollars per print. This is a remarkable and little known flowering of great art in the nineteenth century and well deserves to be recognised along with the very best of Edo production.

The Brilliance of the Osaka School is at The Toshidama Gallery until 20th April 2012.

Collections of Osaka School prints are at The Philadelphia Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Yoshitaki, Scene from the Revenge of the Soga Brothers

How Come All These Japanese Prints Look The Same?

Kuniyoshi, Hanbei 1840

Kunisada, Hanbei 1840

 We’re showing nine prints on this page, all of which seem to share something in common. In some of them the full height, man walking seems to be almost the same; in others a half portrait only; and in all of them a drably coloured striped kimono. How come they share so many characteristics? How come they all seem so similar?

Kuniyoshi, The 100 Ogura Poets 1847

Kunisada, Hanbei 1852

The simple answer is that they all depict the same character in the same kabuki play, even though the actor is not always the same, the production is not necessarily the same and the dates of the prints are eighteen years apart. It is perhaps helpful to imagine the current vogue for remaking classic films. Despite the fact that fifty years may separate the productions, modern film makers will in the majority of cases adopt the same signifiers for a role - the poses, the costume, the haircut etc and the iconic stills from the film will most probably be re-imagined for the 

release poster and so on. Nobody questions that a film role or stage role comes with its own baggage, its own identity. So it was with kabuki, and perhaps more so because of the inherently conservative nature of the art, of the audiences and of the culture.

Kuniyoshi, 36 Fashionable Restaurants 1852

The play that is depicted in all these prints is called Yaoya no Kondate and features the tragic tale of Hanbei, a greengrocer and his wife Ochiyo. Based on the true story of a shinju (double suicide) in 1772,  the play, written shortly after the event, was an immediate hit. Hanbei is an honourable and humble man who loves his wife; unfortunately his wicked step-mother, Okuma, lusts after him. Compromised by the complex tangle of relationships, Hanbei and Ochiya are obliged to commit suicide to find uncomplicated love in the afterlife. The most prolific image from the play is not the dramatic suicide or the seduction by the older woman but of Hanbei, pictured as mild and unassuming, walking away to meet his lover, the forged letter of divorce in his right hand. Kuniyoshi is usually credited with the invention of this strolling, disaffected figure because of his famous depiction of Hanbei in the series The Ogura Poets Compared, a compendium of one hundred prints by Hiroshige, Kunisada and Kuniyoshi and one of the great print series in ukiyo-e.

Kunisada, Hanbei 1852

Kunisada, Hanbei 1856

Kunisada, Hanbei 1858

It is interesting to note that in fact Kuniyoshi first introduced the strolling, turning figure to illustrate Hanbei in the third month of 1840. Kunisada also produced a similar print in 1840, depicting Hanbei in his customary robes - both prints commemorating a performance at the Ichimura theatre in the second month of that year. The distinctive robes will have been the choice of the actor (Nakamura Utaemon IV), the pose is Kuniyoshi’s own. Having revived the pose in 1847 for the 100 Poets series, Kuniyoshi reuses it in 1852 in a collaboration with Hiroshige for a series depicting famous restaurants. Here he has kept the pose and the robes but brought the figure right up to the picture plane to create a half length portrait. In the same year, Kunisada borrows the turning figure wholesale for an actor portrait now in the Brooklyn Museum. He uses the figure once more in 1856 to illustrate a puppet play on the same theme and finally in 1858 for a series of famous actors in hit plays, where he sets the actor against a similar backdrop to Kuniyoshi’s steep, one point perspective of 1840, but set at night using a hugely skillful scheme of dark blues and blacks. Intriguingly, one of Kunisada’s finest prints, a surimono of the Yoshiwara at night also uses this scheme but without the figure. The date of this piece is unknown although it is presumed to be from the 1850’s.

What we can learn from these examples is not a shameful story of plagiarism, but a rich example of collaboration, and of shared artistic and cultural experience, something less known in western art. Ideas and notions of genius and of individual talent were fairly unknown to the Japanese in the 19th century. Rather, they enjoyed the to and fro of images and the building of micro-genres which resulted in a constant refinement of one icon or another sometimes (as we can see here) over a period of decades.

Kunisada, Night in the Yoshiwara

Paper Sizes in Japanese Woodblock Prints

It’s very confusing for people visiting Japanese print galleries - especially online - to see prints described as oban or chuban or kakemono-e with no great explanation of what that means. I thought we’d sort out what these sizes are, why they are as they are and what made artists choose to use each format. It should be noted that there is no standardised measurement for Japanese paper of the Edo period. Sizes below are approximate and different sources will quote sizes that vary by several centimeters.

Japanese woodblock prints from the seventeenth century onwards have used a type of paper known as Hoshu Paper. This is derived from the mulberry tree and is a by-product of the silk industry; it has the advantage of being exceptionally strong and at the same time very soft - allowing the water based inks to penetrate deep into the fibres of the paper and yet strong enough to withstand the repeated printings and harsh rubbing with the baren that multicolour printing requires. The fibre in the paper is very long and this assists the paper in maintaining stability over periods of prolonged wetting and drying, essential when achieving perfect registration of colours over many printings.

The standard sheet size in production is 53cm x 29cm. When the standard sheet (known as o-bosho) is cut in half it produces a pleasing format of 26.5cm x 39cm, (usually trimmed to 36cm x 25cm) a size called oban and this sheet size (illustrated above) is by far the most popular for ukiyo-e artists. Landscape artists such as Hiroshige would turn the standard vertical format on its side to produce horizontal oban prints. Vertical oban prints should properly be called oban tate-e (vertical picture) and horizontal oban sheets denoted by the suffix yoko-e.

The oban sheet could be cut again to produce a half size sheet called a chuban (19.5 x 26.5), a size used almost exclusively by artists of the Osaka School (see Yoshitaki chuban illustrated above right). The oban and the chuban are the primary sizes and it is unusual to come across the many other formats that were occasionally used. Greater flexibility could be employed however by joining several of these units together. Oban and chuban sheets were used in multiple forms to produce both dramatic vertical and horizontal pieces. The commonest by far is the triptych, three sheets joined along their long edge to form a single landscape image. These prints were used at first to depict battle scenes in warrior prints but became popular for showing the full width of the kabuki stage. Kunichika in the latter years of the nineteenth century all but reinvented theatre prints with his dramatic use of this format in wide, panoramas of cinematic breadth with foreground figures set against plain backgrounds (illustrated below) .
Diptychs (two sheets joined by their long edge) were also popular for theatre depictions especially by Utagawa Kunisada in the 1850’s. For even greater impact, polyptychs were used in sometimes five or more sheets, on occasion to show several well known actors as a series of stage portraits united by the same background (illustrated below).

Particularly dramatic is the kakemono-e, a format that used two oban sheets joined along their short edge to form a scroll like or pillar print (see right). This form was popular in the earlier part of the nineteenth century as an early form of pin-up. Artists such as Kunisada and Eisen adopted the form to illustrate well known beauties of the day - sometimes prostitutes or courtesans, sometimes women of fashionable appearance. There are some theatre scenes where the kakemono-e is appropriate although these are more rare. The koban is a small format print measuring 23cm x 13cm and rarely seen, otherwise, it is unlikely that most people will encounter prints that fall outside of the range already stated.

Artists will have used the common oban format partly for reasons of economy; allowing two complete prints from each o-bosho sheet and also because the public who collected ukiyo-e were in the habit of assembling the prints into collections and then having them bound into books to keep them safe, (this explains the pin like album binding holes visible on most prints) and therefore a consistent format made the art of collecting easier. Often the triptych and diptych editions were designed in such a way that they could be sold as individual sheet portraits or as a set. Collectors sometimes mounted the three sheets onto a backing paper to keep them together. This does not much affect the value of the prints and it is not uncommon to see a print described as having “original Japanese album backing”.

In certain prints such as this Yoshitoshi vertical diptych of The Penance of Mongaku it is easy to see how the artist has chosen the format to enhance the design and composition of the piece. Equally many of the chuban series of landscape prints by Hiroshige were reduced in scale to allow for portability and mass production, though his grand designs of his later years were printed in oban tat-e format to allow him to experiment with exaggerated foreground space.

The other issue is trimming and margins. With the knowledge that most prints were to be bound into albums or joined in some way, Japanese woodblock prints were always produced with margins of a centimeter or two. It is to be preferred that a print nowadays should have the margins intact. In some cases (Hiroshige and Yoshitoshi for example) important information such as series titles or publishers details are printed outside the image and on the margin (see left). Intact, full size prints are quite rare. There is the paradox that prints which were trimmed and stored in albums were more likely to survive than loose sheets.

Generally speaking the word oban refers to the paper size, commonly seen in vertical format. The original exact dimension, the existence or loss of margins and the inconsistencies of the publisher and artist will all determine the final sheet size. As a general rule then, Format: oban tat-e with margins, untrimmed means a paper size of roughly 26cm x 35cm in vertical format with a plain paper border around the image and that remains a perfectly acceptable description.

Happy New Year From Toshidama Gallery

Toshidama Gallery would like to wish all its visitors a very happy and prosperous New Year. We have been moving the gallery over the last two weeks and hence there have been fewer blog posts on this and our other site. We are glad to say that the disruption is at an end and we look forward to some new and exciting exhibitions for 2012.

The current show is on until January the 20th and we urge readers to join the Newsletter subscription list and benefit from 10% discounts on all current prints. We open the 2012 season with a great exhibition of Kunisada’s later actor portraits. We are looking primarily at the best of his actor pictures from 1850 onwards. There are some earlier prints by way of contrast but the focus of the show is on his great series of fine and deluxe pictures from the latter part of his career. As usual, we will try to show prints for all budgets and there will be notable prints for sale in every format.

We start this year’s posts with a look at the different formats in woodblock prints and how they affect composition. Our Wordpress blog looks at the work of the contemporary artist Paul Morisson and the monochrome prints of Hiroshige from the 1840’s. Once again Toshidama Gallery would like to thank all its visitors and readers from 2011 for their continued interest and best wishes for 2012.

What to look for in a Japanese Print - Part II

If one were to ask what makes a Japanese woodblock print special or valuable or rare, it would be hard to come up with a single, definitive answer. There are some common factors, of which condition is predominant, but there are many other factors of equal or greater importance. It would be pleasing to say that beauty or skill were paramount but sadly this is not always the case.

As with so many things, a final judgement on the 'worth' of a print is a mixture of many different factors. Balancing these contributions is quite subjective and will also vary from auction house to auction house and from collector to collector. Fashions change, rarity shifts with time and scholarship, consensus is affected by events - like a major retrospective at a national museum - which force scholars and collectors to reassess an artist or a movement. For example, throughout the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, ukiyo-e collectors and commentators dismissed the work of the late Edo period as 'decadent', giving the greatest emphasis and scholarship to the 'classical period', ie prints from the the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as the drifting, sparse women of Utamaro and Haronobu. The works of Kuniyoshi were tolerated but widely dismissed for being vulgar. The work of Kunichika and Yoshitoshi was barely recognised right up until the late twentieth century. Happily, as contemporary scholars work to establish the reputations of these very great artists we can hope for a more balanced overview of Japanese art. Old habits linger however and the rarity, the age and the lingering sense of 'genius' mean that even a patchy Utamaro in very poor condition will command higher prices than a fine Kuniyoshi, despite evidence to the contrary.

So, what to look for. Condition remains paramount - within reason. It is pretty well impossible to find eighteenth century prints in pristine condition. The fugitive vegetable colours mean that even the best prints will have faded disastrously from their original state. The age of these prints means that greater handling and exposure will have had a major and detrimental effect. Even with highly collectible artists, if a print is torn, trimmed, scuffed, faded and creased its value will plummet to almost nothing. For nineteenth century artists it is preferable that the print be untrimmed or at least not trimmed into the image. This is more rare than most people imagine - the best preserved ukiyo prints were stored in albums and ironically these were trimmed to shape when they were bound. The crispness of the print is also important: the earlier in the edition, the sharper the lines on the wooden block will be and hence the sharper the lines andthe edges on the print. This is what is meant when dealers refer to 'early editions' and an early edition will also potentially have different colours and publishing information. In a series such as Yoshitoshi’s 32 Aspects of Women, the second edition without the three-colour cartouche (shown to the left) is worth less than half the value of the first edition with the three-colour cartouche (shown on the right). Sadly there are plenty of dealers on the internet who fail to specify late editions and charge early edition prices, snaring the unwary buyer.


Worse still are reprints - this is a particular problem with Hiroshige. Hiroshige was so popular during his life and following his death that the original blocks became worn beyond repair. For decades after his death, new blocks were carved by pasting an original print onto fresh timber and carving the image exactly through the paper making near identical copies. Whilst these were considered equally valid in Japan, in the West, with our different culture of authenticity, these prints have little or no value at all and yet are often sold as ‘original’ (for example on e-bay, where they are widely available, as shown to the left). It is wise to examine a small area of intense detail, mark for mark against a known example (such as the print to the right). Any deviation will indicate a late copy, as will the flatter and brighter colours and thicker paper.

It is important then, with all print artists, to get early editions, as little trimmed as possible and in the best condition possible - an example of a pristine print is the Kunichika shown to the bottom right. Some damage when working with fragile finite resources is inevitable. In general when collecting it is necessary to make a judgement of the value of a piece - its condition against its rarity and the beauty of the piece itself. An important, rare and beautiful print by Kuniyoshi will still be valuable even if it is slightly trimmed or has some damage. A minor print by Kunisada in poor condition - trimmed, and creased from a late edition will be worth comparatively little. In the end though it is down to the judgement and the preference of the individual. Collecting an entire series by a particular artist - Kuniyoshi’s ‘Treasury of the Loyal Retainers’ for example, will entail buying prints of widely varying quality over a long period of time and then up-trading periodically (selling on less good copies and substituting them with better editions) until a homogeneity is achieved.

At the end of the day, experience and personal preference is what distinguishes the purchases a collector makes. A little experience and some sensible caution are the basics, after that, the thrill of collecting is in the end the acquisition of a very personal knowledge about a very personal response to art. But do also beware of cheap deals and vague wording… the word ‘original’ is sometimes not enough.