Japanese Woodblock Prints - Andreas Marks

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keep their products interesting to their clientele. Playful juxtapositions, imaginary comparisons called mitate developed as a new trend. The beauties were depicted in settings derived from another context and puzzles were created that evoked the interest of consumers and became the latest thing. A development that eventually would happen with actor prints as well, but at a much later period.

      C.1869 Kunichika The actors Nakamura Shikan IV as Hisayoshi, Onoe Kikugorō V as Shibata Katsushige, and Bandō Kamezō I as Shōya Kikuemon in an unidentified play, Nakamura Theater, 1869 Ōban triptych Publisher: Yorozuya Zentarō Museum of Asian Art, National Museums in Berlin

      c.1768–69 Harunobu “Snow” (Yuki), from the series “Elegant Snow, Moon, and Flowers” (Fūryū setsugekka). Chūban. Library of Congress. Suzuki 1979, no. 325-1.

      The main purpose of actor prints was to portray the leading actors at the height of their performance and to offer the audience a souvenir of the theater experience to take home. The kabuki theaters were frequented by a sophisticated audience demanding new, exciting plays. Many plays were not repeated in exactly the same way but often presented as slightly different versions, sustaining an ongoing demand for new prints. The actors themselves developed stylized ways of performing (kata), speech patterns, and exalted poses (mie) that became their signatures and were passed on to the next generation along with their stage names. On actor prints, the actor’s could be identified by the crests (mon) depicted on their costumes or at other positions on the prints. In the first half of the eighteenth century, it became custom to inscribe the actor’s name on the print but in the second half the name disappeared again but the actors could be identified by their crest. In 1770, Shunsho and Buncho conceived half-length actor portraits that turned out to be very well received by kabuki aficionados. They are the principle developers of “likeness pictures” (nigao-e) that captured the unique personality and individuality of an actor, as opposed to earlier actor prints that concentrated on transmitting the beauty of the costumes and the lively motion on the stage. These half-length portraits took the form of striking bust portraits that hit the market around the turn of the nineteenth century. The output of actor prints increased significantly in the nineteenth century and the competitive market gave way to more technical refinements. The leading designers developed formulas as to how to depict certain actors best and reused these formulas to serve the high demand.

      Early 1780s Koryūsai A young woman with the character yoshi on the obi and a scarf in the mouth, attended by a young girl. Hashira-e. Publisher: Nishimuraya Yohachi. Library of Congress. Pins 1982, fig. 385, and Hockley 2003, appendix III, N.12.

      Besides beauties and actors many other subject matters became popular during different periods and several print designers specialized in certain subjects. Japan’s long tradition of heroic narratives and rich canon of legends found their way into so-called warrior prints (musha-e). Serial novelettes supported the interest in historical subjects and warrior prints occupied a respectable share of the market in the nineteenth century. Other literary sources found also their way onto prints, especially the eleventh century “Tale of Genji” (Genji monogatari) and its nineteenth century persiflage “A Country Genji by a Fake Murasaki” (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji; 1829–42). The popularity of the latter resulted in a new subject matter, the “Genji pictures” (Genjie), that were on the market from the 1840s until the early 1890s.

      Landscape views, another popular subject matter in prints, derived from the Chinese theme of “Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers” (Jp. shōshō hakkei), first found in poetry before it became a painting motif. The “Eight Views of ōmi” (ōmi hakkei), or Lake Biwa, is its Japanese pendant that was first illustrated in prints in the first half of the eighteenth century. The travel and pilgrimage boom since the early eighteenth century supported the wide interest in guide books and landscape pictures. Views of the fifty-four stations along the Tōkaidō road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi) that connected Edo with Kyoto, famous sights in Edo (Edo meisho), and views of Mount Fuji became the principal motifs for hundreds of print series.

      The popularity of landscape prints and especially Hiroshige’s Tōkaidō series, provides an example of how publishers effectively returned their investment. For every design, publishers were alert as to how many impressions they had to sell to return their investment. In an ideal situation, a design got sold out and the demand continued to be high enough to produce another print-run. With every additional print-run that followed, publishers gained more profit than with the first, as neither the print designer had to be paid again, nor the engraver, as the woodblocks could still be used (at least for some time). The publisher usually only paid the printer for the production, including his work, the paper, the colors, and refinements, if any. After the engraver prepared the woodblocks, they became the property of the publisher and from some publishers we know that they kept their blocks for many years, waiting for an opportunity to reuse them. Sometimes blocks were brought to pawnshops, sold to other publishers, or the entire business was taken over by another publisher who then automatically came into possession of old blocks.

      1899 Shusei “Yoshitsune and his Followers and the Terrible Storm in Daimotsu Bay” (Daimotsu-no-ura ni Yoshitsune shūjū nanpū). Ōban triptych. Publisher: Morimoto Shōtarō. Collection Arendie and Henk Herwig.

      Hiroshige. 1857. “Sudden evening shower at Atake on the Great Bridge” (Ōhashi, Atake no yūdachi), from the series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (Meisho Edo hyakkei). ōban. Publisher: Sakanaya Eikichi. Honolulu Academy of Arts: Gift of James A. Michener, 1991 (22745). Sakai 1981, p. 250, ōban no. 62.22.

      In a few cases, the period of activity of a publishing house goes well beyond one hundred years, sometimes even over two hundred years. Tsuruya Kiemon, for example, started to produce books in the 1620s, turned then towards prints and his successors were active in this field until 1852. This long period outstretches by far the life of a single person and Tsuruya Kiemon, like many others, developed in fact from an individual publisher to a publishing firm that evidently operated over many generations. Usually, the leadership of the firm was passed on to the next generation who then took the predecessor’s name at the time of inheritance; much like the print designers and carvers did. It is not clear which generation of Tsuruya Kiemon had to abandon the print publishing business in 1852, but of another publisher, Daikokuya Heikichi, it is known that the publishing firm was in operation for 167 years until Heikichi V passed away in 1931.

      In order to assist consumers in identifying the sources of their prints and to increase the possibility of making them returning customers, publishers marked their prints with their trademark. Publisher trademarks appeared in a wide range of styles depending on a number of factors like the time of publication. Today, this makes publishing seals a means to assist in dating prints from a time when date seals were not in use. The trademark on a print could have been a logo without an obvious connection to a specific publisher up to an elaborate description of the publishers’ merits including his full name and address. To return to the previous example Tsuruya Kiemon, Tsuruya Kiemon actually was the firm name, lit.: Kiemon’s Crane Shop. His trade mark was Tsuruki and the official name of the publishing house was Senkakudō (lit.: Immortal Crane Hall). His family name was Kobayashi, making his personal name Kobayashi Kiemon. The trademark on a print could incorporate any of these names and some publishers even created different seals for each print of a multi-sheet series.

      Print series are important elements of this art form. Japanese woodblock prints developed from book illustrations, sequential, interconnected images that tell a story. These images became dissociated from the text and released from their bound form to be published as untitled sets called kumimono. At first, actor prints were not serialized but singularly issued after a successful performance. Series of actors only started to appear in the second half of

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