Concept
Ukiyo-e
Related concepts (36)
Edo period
The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional daimyo. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, perpetual peace, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture, colloquially referred to as Oedo.
Kabuki
Kabuki is a classical form of Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes, and for the elaborate kumadori make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to have originated in the early Edo period, when the art's founder, Izumo no Okuni, formed a female dance troupe that performed dances and light sketches in Kyoto.
Hokusai
, known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. He is best known for the woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic print The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Hokusai was instrumental in developing ukiyo-e from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals.
Japanese art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BCE, to the present day. Japan has been subject to sudden invasions of new ideas followed by long periods of minimal contact with the outside world.
Woodblock printing
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, s or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed.
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan, and one of the three major cities of Japan (Tokyo-Osaka-Nagoya). It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following the special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 million in the 2020 census, it is also the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, which is the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan and the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants.
Kansai region
The Kansai region or the Kinki region lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropolitan region of Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto (Keihanshin region) is the second-most populated in Japan after the Greater Tokyo Area. The terms Kansai, Kinki, and Kinai have their roots during the Asuka period.
Hiroshige
Utagawa Hiroshige (ˌhɪərəʊˈʃiːɡeɪ, also USˌhɪərəˈ-; 歌川 広重 ɯtaɡawa çiɾoꜜɕiɡe), born Andō Tokutarō (安藤 徳太郎; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868).
Shogun
Shogun (ˈʃoʊgʌn ; shōgun, ɕoːɡɯɴ), officially 征夷大将軍, was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, although during part of the Kamakura period, shoguns were themselves figureheads, with real power in the hands of the Shikken of the Hōjō clan. The office of shogun was in practice hereditary, although over the course of the history of Japan several different clans held the position.
Edo
Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (, "Eastern Capital") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city.