Digital Archiving Printing Blocks and Establishing Woodblock Bibliography

A great number of printed books were published in Japan after the establishment of commercial publishing in the Edo period (1603–1867). Even though it is well-known that most of the books were printed by means of woodblocks, these printing blocks have not been studied in detail because they are difficult to access and physically handle. However, digitization of the printing blocks revolutionizes research and also facilitates information sharing. This article will present a new method of digitizing printing blocks and archiving them in an online image database. The article will also draw attention to what kind of information we can retrieve from the blocks, especially circumstances of publishing that conventional bibliographies based on the printed books cannot reveal

Striking Chords: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints (2021)

The book “Striking Chords: music in ukiyo-e prints” is a student version of a scholarly catalog that accompanies the RISD Museum’s ukiyo-e prints exhibition of the same title. ... This exhibition is a culmination of an ukiyo-e art history course taught at RISD in the fall of 2021. The project was generously accommodated by the RISD Museum. With the help of Wai Yee Chiong, Associate Curator of Asian Art, fifteen prints were selected from the collection of the RISD Museum. For the exhibition’s online component, which is still under construction, additional prints were chosen – two more from the RISD collection, four from the collection of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia, and one from a private collection. All these works are included in the catalog. ... In the spirit of the exhibition topic, this project prompted the entire class to work in concordance as if an instrumental ensemble or even an orchestra. It is the students’ hope that their “Striking Chords” project does indeed strike a chord in the exhibition visitors. -- Foreword, Striking Chords: music in ukiyo-e prints Contributing Authors Joanne Ahn, Benjamin Anderson, Miranda Cancelosi, Yuanyuan Yuki Cao, Zhenrui Ray Cao, Naiqian Chen, Julia Chien, Lynn Cho, Yewon Chun, Zewei Feng, Jamie Gim, Nicholas Grassi, Tzu-Chun Hsu, Jessie Jing, Jackson Kneath, Yingshuet Celine Lam, Haoyu Li, Rilia Li, Jason Liao, Serene Lin, Yichen Ariel Pan, Lydia Pinkhassik, Xiaoqi Shen, Shuixin Wang, Jihyun Woo, Catherine Wu, Jack Wulf, Liu Yang, Yue Zi, Qi Caroline Zou.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/thad_studentwork_ukiyo-e_prints_exhibitioncatalogs/1008/thumbnail.jp

The Color Revolution: Printed Books In Eighteenth-Century Japan

Beginning in the mid-1760s, images printed in more than five colors in early modern Japan were known as nishiki-e 錦絵, or “brocade pictures,” an appellation that signaled their visual richness in distinction to prints in monochrome or limited color. Most accounts of full-color printing locate the development of this technology and its visual impact in the medium of the single-sheet print, as part of the genre of ukiyo-e 浮世絵 (the “pictures of the floating world”). This project revises that view by considering the illustrated books produced in the full-color technique, which predate or appear contemporaneously with the so-called “nishiki-e revolution.” Closely analyzing the materiality and visual programs of these books reveals how their use of printed color not only constitutes an important shift in technical practices of printing, but also signals a wider engagement with the artistic, social, and scientific discourses of mid-eighteenth century Japan. Ranging from interest in the natural world to painting, from poetry to scientific classification, from elite milieux to commercial publishers, these illustrated books demonstrate the convergence of a diverse set of concerns upon the particular medium of the color-printed, thread-bound book. The three case studies analyzed in this dissertation take up books differentiated by subject matter, style, and artistic genres. The first two chapters examine a book of fishes and its sequel, on the theme of plants and insects; both books are genre-bending works that combine concerns of poetry, natural studies, and painting. The third chapter considers two picture books of the floating world (ukiyo-ehon 浮世絵本), which feature actors and prostitutes of the pleasure quarter, respectively. Tracing the movement of printed “full color” from its emergence in the context of coterie poetry groups to its later status as a commercial imperative, this study reframes the earliest full-color illustrated books as critical artifacts of technological and epistemological change for picture-making and print in early modern Japan, centered around the materiality and conceptual power of color

National Institute of Japanese Literature 2023

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Striking Chords II: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints (2022)

The theme of music in ukiyo-e prints has been explored by the RISD art history students for two semesters (fall 2021 and spring 2022) in a hands-on curatorial format. The resulting exhibition Striking Chords: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints, is on view at the RISD Museum from February through July 2022. The spring semester project is virtual. However, the approach is similar – to comprehensively study music-related prints in the collection of the RISD Museum and to share the findings with interested audiences, albeit in digital format. Nineteen prints have been selected. In the exhibition’s virtual space, they are displayed according to thematic areas. Those display areas include prints illustrating music played for leisure – sometimes solely for pleasure but occasionally for celebratory occurrences or for moral instruction. Another area shows prints associated with professional performers – actors of the kabuki theater, chanters of the puppet theater, or street entertainers. There are also sections dedicated to prints that depict music performed within mythical lore, or ceremonial music as well as martial music. ... By close visual exploration of this selection of prints, by investigating circumstances of the scenes represented and peculiarities of the objects depicted, by striving to uncover cultural references imbedded in these images, by listening to music played on the instruments depicted students who curated this exhibition sought to come closer to the beautiful and intriguing world of ukiyo-e prints. The sound continues for but a moment, ukiyo-e prints were designed as ephemera, but their resonance appears timeless. We hope that this exhibition’s virtual visitors will echo these sentiments. -- Foreword, Striking Chords II: Music in Ukiyo-e Prints Contributing Authors Leslie Berumen Flores, Alisa Boardman, Junyi Cao, Yuhi Chang, Connie Cheng, Meicheng Chi, Cyra Cupid, Monet Fukawa, Nina Hong, Ryan Hsiao, Rose Kim, Timothy Li, Jessica Lin, Baidurjya Madhav, Jae Nam, Maxton O\u27Connor, Jiyeon Park, Zhiying Shi, Hanna Suros, Milo Tomizawa, Kevin Wu, Jingjing Yang, Yisheng Yuan, Jiayun Carina Zhang, Zizheng Roye Zhang, Alex Jihao Zhu.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/thad_studentwork_ukiyo-e_prints_exhibitioncatalogs/1009/thumbnail.jp

Boating in the Floating World: ukiyo-e prints (2018)

The student-curated exhibition “Boating in the Floating World” focuses on images of boats in ukiyo-e prints as represented in some works from the collection of the RISD Museum. Boats were occasionally depicted in the 18th century celebrity-focused figurative genres. Fairly often they appeared in bijinga – images of beauties, rarely in yakusha-e – portraits of kabuki theater actors, sometimes in compositions derived from literature, history or lore. Nautical motifs became much more pronounced from 1830s with the powerful upsurge of the landscape genre that is believed to have been triggered by the increasingly available Berlin blue – a non-fugitive artificial pigment of deep, saturated hues. Views of well-known places, widely familiar both as nature sites and scenes of ordinary life became shown in different seasons, time of the day and weather conditions. These landscape images were easily relatable to a broad variety of print viewers and, additionally, carried new profundity hidden within everyday motifs. ... -- Foreword, Boating in the Floating World Contributing Authors Tanya Agarwal, Kaylyn Chileen, Hye Jin Cho, Jeongmun Victoria Choi, Jane Gorelik, Max Hertz, Xiner Jiang, Olivia Kim, Junsun Ko, Kanika Kumar, Elizaveta Lazarchuk, Daniel Lee, Qihang Li, Victoria Liang, William Mitchell, Jonathan Muroya, Mallika Nanda, Samantha NG, Chaeri Park, Zying Jennie Peng, Sophie Sena, Iain Wall, Naiqian Mac Wang, Sonia Wang, Yihan Wang, Jen Chenyu Zhang, Cindy Zhanghttps://digitalcommons.risd.edu/thad_studentwork_ukiyo-e_prints_exhibitioncatalogs/1005/thumbnail.jp

Representing the Daoist God Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior, in Late Imperial China

Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior, emerged as an anthropomorphic deity in the early Northern Song (960-1126) and reached the peak of his popularity in the Ming (1368-1644). Prior to this time he was known as Xuanwu, the Dark Warrior, and appeared as a tortoise entwined with a snake. Widely varying representations of this Daoist god, one of the most prominent in the Daoist pantheon, coexisted throughout the Song and later history of his cult. Different images fashioned to serve different audiences reveal the wide social range of Zhenwu believers and shifting beliefs about the god's powers. Literary evidence combines with the ubiquitous pictorial and three-dimensional images to demonstrate Zhenwu's pervasive presence in the religious and cultural landscape. A scripture, sets of ritual scrolls, pictorial stele, cave temple, and an album depicting a corps of thunder marshals affiliate Zhenwu with the Daoist Thunder Department and with certain of its members, notably the Four Saints (si sheng). Zhenwu also appears in Daoist and Buddhist assembly paintings, murals and scroll sets, linked to performances of the huanglu zhai [purgation rite of the yellow register] and the shuilu fahui [rite for deliverance of creatures of water and land]. Fervent Yuan and Ming imperial patronage of the god's home, Mt. Wudang, gives evidence of Zhenwu's emergence as an independent deity with a cadre of assistant martial divinities. Many Ming statues represent his role as a tutelary god and his participation in the pantheon of Chinese popular religion. Ming illustrations of his hagiography in a woodblock-printed collection of stories, a canonical Daoist scripture, a painted album, a complex piece of sculpture, and an edition of the vernacular novel Beiyou ji [Journey to the North] indicate the appeal of specific episodes of his life story and show how they were adapted for different audiences. Through interdisciplinary analysis of the literary, historical, social, and religious contexts of key Zhenwu images, this case study demonstrates the extent to which Daoist imagery permeated the visual culture of late imperial China

An Analysis of Some Illustrated Books by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice

The collection of Japanese prints, albums and illustrated books (ehon) in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice is the result of the last stop in Japan of a journey to the Far East of Prince Henry Bourbon-Parma, Count of Bardi and his wife Adelgunde of Bragança, during the years 1887-1889. The gathering of more than thirty thousand objects became the core of the present collection. Among these there are about 500 illustrated books of famous ukiyoe masters, surimono, and colour prints nishikie. The creation of catalogue entries in Japanese and Italian and the analysis of each print reveals an amazing quantity of unpublished ukiyoe masterpieces and allows a division into different groups according to the subject matter. At the same time, this distinction into different genres shows an interesting tendency in the formation of the collection together with a possible new classification of the prints themselves. This study aims to shed a new light on this particular collection while focusing on a series of illustrated books by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1848). Among these the famous volumes of the Manga, the illustrated books on warriors, an unusual album with some prints from the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and a selection from the five volumes dedicated to teach the artisans how to draw all kind of decorations