flying twigs

Ukiyo-e art meant ‘pictures of the floating world’. It was a way of seeing life as ever-changing, with bittersweet fleeting moments. Nothing was out of bounds – theatres, brothels, tea houses, labourers, travellers, artists, prostitutes, lovers. And always feeling that life was ephemeral and impossible to grasp.

Ukiyo-e Style

Ukiyo-e developed as Edo (the old name for Tokyo) developed and became a city. Times were changing and a new merchant class appeared. They had aspirations to acquire affordable art that they could relate to. Artists responded with Ukiyo-e themes printed with woodblocks. They were affordable because they could be printed from again and again.

This was mass production, making prints more affordable than unique art. In other words, the production of their art could scale.

Ukiyo-e and Edo influenced each other, Ukiyo-e captured the essence of Edo’s culture and lifestyle. And Edo provided the buyers and the money for the development of Ukiyo-e.

Woodblock Printing

Ukiyo-e artists used multi-coloured woodblocks to produce a print. Printing was a collaboration between the artist, the woodblock carver, and the printer. The artist created a design and the carver transferred the design to a set of woodblocks. The printer then inked the blocks and pressed them onto paper one at a time to build up the final print.

The art was immediate, with bright colours, bold outlines, and stylised flat shapes. And because Japan had been cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, the art grew without being influenced from outside. And that isolation was a deliberate policy of the Government.

Sakoku and Kuogune

Sakoku is a Japanese word that means to cut off extraneous inputs so as to allow one to think more freely And it continued until brought to an end from outside. 

Kurogune means Black Ships and it symbolises the end of isolation because of a superior force from outside.

The Black Ships were the Western ships arriving in Japan. In particular, kurofune refers to four ships, the Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry. They arrived in Japan on July 14, 1853, and their technology made it obvious to the Japanese that they could not remain isolated any longer.

The black of Black Ships was both the black colour of the ships and to the black smoke from the coal-fired steam engines.

So kurofune became a symbol of the end of isolation, a feeling tinged with regret and an uncertain future.

But that future was a two-way street.

When Japan opened to the West in the 19th century, the flat perspective in Japanese art dazzled the Impressionist and post-Impressionists. That influence became known as the Japonisme movement. Van Gogh openly used Japanese themes with a flat perspective. Cezanne destroyed the standard Western technique of showing depth, and mixed the foreground and background into a flattened perspective as though the scene was viewed from several viewpoints simultaneously.

But just as the world outside Japan was influenced by Ukiyo-e, so Japan could hold onto that perspective on life only as long as it held off the rest of the world.

When Japanese art reached Europe, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in France used the same technique. It was a way to bring their art to the attention of the public, and it was the beginning of the democratisation of art in Europe. Think of Toulouse-Lautrec and his risqué Folies Bergère posters. Think of the advertisements for Parisian cafes.

Japan and The Outside World

Ukiyo-e had meaning as long as Japan had only itself to examine. That changed with the opening of Japan by the United States under Commodore Perry that marked the end of the country’s isolationist policies.

Prior to the mid 19th century, Japan was largely isolated from the rest of the world. It has only limited trade with the Dutch and Chinese. However, the United States wanted to expand its influence in Asia. It believed that Japan would be an important trading partner.

So in 1853, President Fillmore sent Commodore Matthew Perry and a fleet of four steamships to Japan. Their missions was to negotiate the opening of Japanese ports to American trade. It was an uneven negotiation in that United States technology far outclassed Japanese military technology.

Perry arrived in Japan with a letter from President Fillmore addressed to the Emperor of Japan. The request was for the establishment of diplomatic and commercial relations. After several months of negotiations, the Japanese government agreed to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854. That opened two ports to American ships and the establishment of a US consulate in Japan.

This treaty was the beginning of Japan’s dealings with the outside world, followed by similar treaties with other Western powers.

President Fillmore, the man who sent Commodore Perry on his mission, sided with the pro-slavery members in his party in the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. His poor handling of that issue was a one of the important causes that led to the American Civil War.

And yet Fillmore gave the order to Commodore Perry to open up Japan. And who can properly understand the consequences of that decision, even one hundred and seventy-five years later.

Ironically, the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco where many counter-culture bands played in the 1960s and 70s is named after President Fillmore.

The Opening Up Of Japan

The opening of Japan to foreign trade and foreign culture influenced the country’s culture and society and eventually brought Ukiyo-e art and culture to an end. Japan modernised in technology, fashion, and education.

From there one can almost see the arc of history that led to the Russo-Japanese War, the imperial aspirations in the twenties and thirties, the Second World War in the Pacific, and the rise of Japan after the war.

With modernisation the Ukiyo-e culture that underpinned Japanese art was swept away. Or was it? I visited Japan in the early nineteen nineties and again in 2024, and still today one can see and feel that there is a private part of Japan still beating to that drum.

Here are some of the artists whose work we like:

• Toyohara Kunichika
• Utamaro Kitagawa
• Tanigami Konan
• Goyō Hashiguch
• Bijutsu Sekai
• Keisai Eisen
• Utagawa Kuniyoshi
• Utagawa Kunisada
• Kogyo Tsukioka
• Shibata Zeshin
• Ohara Koson
• Ishida Yūtei
• Kamisaka Sekka