 Woodblock
printing in Japan (木版画, もくはんが, moku hanga) - A technique
best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre;
however, it was also used very widely for printing books in
the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China
for centuries to print books, long before the advent of
movable type, but was only widely adopted in Japan
surprisingly late, during the Edo period (1603-1867). The
technique is essentially the same as that which is called
woodcut in Western printmaking.
Woodblock-printed books from Chinese Buddhist temples were
seen in Japan as early as the eighth century. In 764 the
Empress Shotuku commissioned one million small wooden
pagodas, each containing a small woodblock scroll (typically
6 x 45 cm) printed with a Buddhist text (Hyakumanto Darani).
These were distributed to temples around the country as
thanksgiving for the suppression of the Emi Rebellion of
764. These are the earliest examples of woodblock printing
known, or documented, from Japan.
By the eleventh century, Buddhist temples in Japan were
producing their own printed books of sutras, mandalas, and
other Buddhist texts and images. For centuries, printing was
restricted only to the Buddhist sphere, as it was too
expensive for mass production, and did not have a receptive,
literate public to which such things might be marketed.
It was not until 1590 that the first secular work would be
printed in Japan. This was the Setsuyō-shū, a two-volume
Chinese-Japanese dictionary. Though the Jesuits operated a
movable type printing press in Nagasaki from 1590, printing
equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army from
Korea in 1593 had far greater influence on the development
of the medium. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even
before becoming shogun, effected the creation of the first
native moveable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than
metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which
were used to print a number of political and historical
texts. As shogun, Ieyasu would act to promote literacy and
learning, leading to the beginnings of the emergence of an
educated urban public. Printing was not dominated by the
shogunate at this point, however; private printers appeared
in Kyoto at the beginning of the 17th century, and Toyotomi
Hideyori, Ieyasu's primary political opponent, aided in the
development and spread of the medium as well. An edition of
the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean
moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei.
This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type
printing extant today. Despite the appeal of moveable type,
however, it was soon decided that the running script style
of Japanese writings would be better reproduced using
woodblocks, and so woodblocks were once more adopted; by
1640 they were once again being used for nearly all
purposes.
The medium quickly gained popularity among artists, and was
used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books.
The great pioneers in applying this method to the creation
of art books, and in preceding mass production for general
consumption, were Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan. At
their studio in Saga, the pair created a number of
woodblocks of the Japanese classics, both text and images,
essentially converting handscrolls to printed books, and
reproducing them for wider consumption. These books, now
known as Kōetsu Books, Suminokura Books, or Saga Books, are
considered the first and finest printed reproductions of
many of these classic tales; the Saga Book of the Tales of
Ise (Ise monogatari), printed in 1608, is especially
renowned.
The technology, though more tedious and expensive than later
methods, was far less so than the traditional method of
writing out each copy of a book by hand; thus, Japan began
to see something of literary mass production. While the Saga
Books were printed on expensive fancy paper, and used
various embellishments, being printed specifically for a
small circle of literary connoisseurs, other printers in
Kyoto quickly adapted the technique to producing cheaper
books in large numbers, for more general consumption. The
content of these books varied widely, including travel
guides, advice manuals, kibyōshi (satirical novels),
sharebon (books on urban culture), art books, and play
scripts for the jōruri (puppet) theatre. Often, within a
certain genre, such as the jōruri theatre scripts, a
particular style of writing would come to be the standard
for that genre; in other words, one person's personal
calligraphic style was adopted as the standard style for
printing plays.
Individual publishing houses arose and grew, publishing both
books and individual prints. One of the most famous and
successful was called Tsuta-ya. Interestingly, a publisher's
ownership of the physical woodblocks used to print a given
text or image constituted the closest equivalent to a
concept of "copyright" that existed at this time. Publishers
or individuals could buy woodblocks from one another, and
thus take over the production of certain texts, but beyond
the protective ownership of a given set of blocks (and thus
a very particular representation of a given subject), there
was no conception of ownership of ideas. Plays would be
adopted by competing theatres, and either reproduced
wholesale, or individual plot elements or characters might
be adapted; this was considered perfectly legitimate at the
time.
Woodblock printing continued to be used after the decline of
ukiyo-e, and the introduction of movable type and other
technologies, as a method and medium for printing texts as
well as for producing art, both within traditional modes
such as ukiyo-e and in a variety of more radical or Western
forms that might be construed as modern art.
The technique for printing texts and images was generally
quite similar; the obvious differences being in the volume
produced when working with texts (many pages for a single
work), and the complexity of multiple colors that might be
encountered when working with images. Images in books were
almost always in monochrome (black ink only), and for a time
art prints were likewise monochrome or done in only two or
three colors.
The text or image would first be drawn onto washi (Japanese
paper), and then glued onto a plank of wood, usually cherry.
Wood would then be cut away, based on the outlines given by
the drawing. A small wooden object called a baren would be
used to press or burnish the paper against the inked
woodblock, thus applying the ink onto the paper. Although
this may have been done purely by hand at first, complex
wooden mechanisms were soon invented and adopted to help
hold the woodblock perfectly still and to apply proper
pressure in the printing process. This would be especially
helpful once multiple colors began to be introduced, and
needed to be applied with precision atop previous ink
layers.
While, again, text was nearly always monochrome, as were
images in books, the growth of the popularity of ukiyo-e
brought with it demand for ever increasing numbers of colors
and complexity of techniques. The stages of this development
follow.
Sumizuri-e (墨摺り絵, "ink printed pictures") - monochrome
printing using only black ink
Benizuri-e (紅摺り絵, "crimson printed pictures") - red ink
details or highlights added by hand after the printing
process；green was sometimes used as well
Tan-e (丹絵) - orange highlights using a red pigment called
tan
Aizuri-e (藍摺り絵, "indigo printed pictures"), Murasaki-e (紫絵,
"purple pictures"), and other styles in which a single color
would be used in addition to, or instead of, black ink
Urushi-e (漆絵) - a method in which glue was used to thicken
the ink, emboldening the image; gold, mica and other
substances were often used to enhance the image further.
Urushi-e can also refer to paintings using lacquer instead
of paint; lacquer was very rarely if ever used on prints.
Nishiki-e (錦絵, "brocade pictures") - a method in which
multiple blocks were used for separate portions of the
image, allowing a number of colors to be utilized to achieve
incredibly complex and detailed images; a separate block
would be carved to apply only to the portion of the image
designated for a single color. Registration marks called
kentō (見当) were used to ensure correspondence between the
application of each block.
Information source: “Woodblock printing in Japan.”
wikipedia.org. Article date: 7 Jan. 2008. Retrieved:
Wikipedia. 16 Feb. 2008 <Woodblock
printing in Japan>. |
|
