Unknown
Japanese

Key Block, 18th c. CE, late
cherry wood

SBMA, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Krene
1985.19.1ab

RESEARCH PAPER

The History of Japanese Wood Block Prints 
Ukiyo-e is a Japanese word meaning “pictures of the floating world”, or in other words “depictions of popular pleasures of town life”. This word also describes the art of woodblock printing in Japan between 1600 and 1868. This was the Edo period when Japan was closed off from the rest of the world except for occasional trading with the Portuguese. It was a time of relative peace. The warring provinces had been tamed by the Tokugawa Shogun, who resided in Edo (modern day Tokyo).

Life in Japan during this time was strict but peaceful. Firearms had been outlawed. The bakufu, as they were called, were the administrators of the laws and also the censors for the Shogun. The Emperor was a figurehead and resided in Kyoto. The Daimyo, or feudal lords, and their retainers the samurai governed the outlying provinces under the Tokugawa clans’ overall rule. 
Every second year the Daimyo were expected to travel to Edo and spend a few months with the Shogun. The entire Daimyo family as well as the servants and samurai would live in large residences in Edo. Edo grew quite rapidly as a result of this arrangement and by 1700 the population was more than a million people. As their duties were few during the months in Edo, the Daimyo and samurai made up a large leisure class in need of recreation and entertainment; so began the Pleasure Quarter.

The Pleasure Quarter grew as a refuge for this new middle class. The bakufu were responsible for monitoring and licensing the Pleasure Quarter (Yoshiwara), with its teahouses, restaurants, and brothels. The entertainment included Kabuki plays, dancing, poetry readings, singing, restaurants with entertaining Geisha girls and courtesans called bijin. These beauties or bijin became the pin-ups of the ukiyo (Floating World).

The woodblock print became the advertising vehicle for the ukiyo of Japan during the Edo Period. Woodblock prints told the masses of the latest Kabuki play and its actors, the most beautiful courtesans and bijin, the latest fashions and hairstyles. They were the posters or fashion magazines of Japan and thrived during the Edo era. Prints were produced in the thousands and were available at a price made accessible to all. They were small, portable, relatively cheap, disposable and repeatable.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century woodblock prints were simple black-and-white drawings. By the 1740’s the technology had improved and the prints included images that were colored, originally by hand, and eventually by woodblock printing (nishiki-e). The genre also expanded to include illustrations of legends and stories, images to accompany poems, pictures of plants and animals, vegetables and food, and by the nineteenth century, views of the cities and landscapes of Japan.

The Process: 
The basic principle of woodblock printing is said to have been invented by the Chinese about the fourth century C.E.. It involves carving a design on a flat surface of a block of wood and reproducing the design by pressing paper onto the inked block. This sounds like the carved potato art from grammar school. Where the potato is dipped in paint and pressed onto paper and a pattern is made. The process for making a woodblock print is much more complicated however, and required four different people to accomplish it.

The four people involved in making a woodblock print were the publisher, the artist, the engraver, and the printer. The publisher was the entrepreneur; he controlled the entire process and found a market for the prints after they were finished. He commissioned the design from the artist and even sometimes dictated the subject matter.

The Artist and the Design Sketch

The artist would produce a design painted in all black outlines on a thin paper called mino. The publisher’s choice of subject matter had to be approved by the bakufu. This seal of approval was stamped on the artist’s design if it met the current criteria for acceptability by the Shogun. In addition to the censor’s seal, the artist would also sign his work, and sometimes even the publisher would have his name noted on the drawing. The publisher would then send the approved artist’s design the engraver’s workshop.

The Carver

The engraver’s (or carver’s) profession often started when he was quite young, maybe ten years old. He would start by cutting lettering, and then he learned to remove the excess areas of the color woodblocks, after that he practiced cutting the outlines for the costumes, hands and feet. After more practice, and if he was especially talented he would be allowed to carve facial outlines, and finally he could try the finest carving of the elaborate hairstyles of the finishing block. It might take as long as ten years of apprenticeship to learn the range of block carving techniques, but by then he was often able to cut away the wood from either side of lines as little as 1/250 inch across.

Cherry wood, which has a fine grain, is fairly easy to carve, and was relatively available was the chosen wood for woodblocks. The size of a printing block was limited by the size of timber available. Fruit trees such as Cherry produced blocks not much wider than 10 inches. The length might be a little greater. The direction of the grain was fixed and the woodblock was carved using the broadside of the wood. Woodblocks were re-used by carving a different composition on the back or planed down when they no longer needed carved surface. Re-using the blocks seasoned the wood making it easier to carve; also, carvers preferred to work with old blocks because any imperfections in the grain would already have been revealed. The thickness of a typical woodblock might start at 1_”(?) and could end up less than half that before the block could no longer be used.

The carver’s first step was to spread rice-starch paste (nori) on the block. He would press the artist’s drawing face down on the block and smooth it out. If the paper was too thick, a sesame-oil or water and oil mixture was applied to the paper to increase its transparency so the design could be clearly seen by the carver. He began by cutting through the paper with a sharp knife, cutting away to leave ridges which, when inked, would print the black outlines of the design. 
Different sized chisels with rounded blades were used to clear away areas of the composition which were not to be colored or printed, but were background. These chisels were struck with a mallet. 



In the final step he carved the kento guide marks. One mark was L shaped and carved at the bottom left corner, another kento mark would be carved about two thirds of the way along one of the sides. These marks were the guide lines needed to judge where the paper would be placed so that each time the paper would line up or register exactly like the last and the colors and lines would be exact. Should there be a mistake in the carving, cutting out the bad area, and inserting a wood plug that was then re-carved could make a correction. This original woodblock which, contained the completed drawing, was called the key block. 



After carving the key block would be painted with black (sumi) a soot-water combination ink and a print would be made by placing a thick sheet of mino paper on the inked block and pressing the paper with a baren, a disk of batting covered with bamboo leaves. This trial proof would go back to the artist to be checked. The artist would also choose colors and mark the areas that would eventually be colored. If there were to be areas of texture or pattern, the artist would detail one area, but leave the finishing of this across the whole block to the carver. At this point the artist usually had no further involvement in the printmaking process.

The number of woodblocks needed for an artist’s drawing depended on the number of colors chosen or how close the blocks of color were to each other. In other words if the umbrella was yellow and the sky was blue a separate woodblock had to be carved for each of these. The blocks used to print them would show only the relief of just the yellow area or just the blue area. Usually each different color had its own woodblock but sometimes by overprinting two colors a third color was created. To guide the carver in making these color blocks, the design was pasted on the block in the same fashion as it had been for the key block. A typical multicolored print required about ten woodblocks but as many as 50 might be used on the finest and most intricate prints. 



The Printer 

Once the wood blocks were carved they were given to the printer. The printer’s tools consisted of several brushes of different shapes and sizes for transferring the inks and dyes to the block and a baren to rub and press the paper onto the block. He also had on hand a supply of the traditional Japanese paper called washi. It could be made from various types of plant fibers but most of the ukiyo-e color woodblock prints were printed on washi made from mulberry fibers.

The printer would moisten the block face. Then he would daub on the black sumi ink or chosen color pigment in a mixture with rice paste (nori) using a small flicker brush made of bamboo leaves. He would saturate the raised areas of the block not worrying about getting the color onto the carved out background areas. For most nishiki-e, he spread the color pigment evenly on the block. 



For special effects he modulated the application. By adding a little extra water with a rag (wrapped around a small block of wood or stone) or a brush, to select areas of the woodblock he could daub on a bit of pigment in the drier areas and let it run to he wetter ones creating a gradual wash (bokashi) of color to the sky or water. 



For textural effects like nets, he created two blocks with diagonal carved lines and pressed them at ninety degrees to each other to get the netting effect. 
Next the printer took a sheet of washi paper and placed it face down on the woodblock being careful to line it up with the kento marks. He printed by rubbing firmly from the back with a baren disc. Sometimes marks of a faint wood grain from the block remained leaving a pattern on the colored areas. To avoid this more nori was added to the pigments. At times line was eliminated completely (bokashi) and a patch of color was printed alone, indicating shading or a distant figure slightly obscured. Other unusual effects required extra blocks and time consuming printing techniques.

The printer took impressions of the various woodblocks in a standard, fixed order. First the key block followed by the woodblocks for paler colors or small areas of color, followed by woodblocks for strong colors. Most backgrounds were printed with repeated inking toward the end. Last the impressions of blocks intensifying black details and of the important finishing block(s) with the fine-line black details such as the hair. 



Before the series was started, however, a trial printing in pale values of the colors was runs to check that the edges were accurate, and then a test print of all true colors was made and confirmed as being exactly what the artist or publisher wanted. 



After final approval, or after corrections made and final approval made from the trial print, only then did the printer start to print the series, doing each color one at a time across the whole series of prints, before doing the next color. He might have to charge the block with his color and paste mix more than once, but once the block was saturated he could often print several sheets before recharging it again.

A typical nishiki-e edition could easily require two weeks to print. In the last step the margins were evened around the finished prints, and they were bundled and tied and sent off to the publisher for sale.

SUMMARY 

Woodblock printing seems a simple craft with its primitive tools and hand made process. Yet, it’s hard to view it as a simple craft when the genius and collaboration of several artists’ is required to bring it to its final moment. The entrepreneurial talents of the publisher, the artistic genius of the painter, the technical expertise of the engraver and the subtle sense the printer must have for color and line. Woodblock printing is a reminder of the enduring beauty that can be brought about by the skill and care of human hands.

Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Marjorie Palonen 1997

Edited and website preparation by Loree Gold, 2005/2012

Bibliography

Bickel, Julian: Hiroshige in Tokyo, The floating World of Edo; Rohnert Park, California; 1994.

Kanad, Margaret miller: Color Woodblock Printmaking. The Traditional Method of Ukiyo-e; Tokyo, Japan Shufunotomo Co., Ltd; 1989.
Keyes, Roger and George Kuwayama: The Bizarre Imagery of Yoshitoshi; The Herbert R. Cole Collection; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; 1980.

Phillips, Walter J.: The Technique of The Color Wood-Cut: London, England; Brown-Robertson Co., Inc.; 1926.

Schaap, Robert and Eric van den Ing: Beauty and Violence; Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi 1839-1892; Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Havilland Press; 1992.

Stevenson, John: Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon; Redmond, Wa.; San Francisco Graphic Society; 1992.


SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Among the multitude of blocks required for creating a color woodblock print, the key block is the first to be produced from the original drawing of the artist. It is the outline of the image from which all color blocks would be created. This key block is carved on both sides, demonstrating the economic use of wood in the trade. One side depicts two women and a girl gathering dandelions; the center figure’s head has been re-cut (repaired or repurposed) possibly at a later date. The other side are two pages from an illustrated book, containing text and images.

- Important Works on Paper from the Permanent Collection, 2021

This block of wood is carved on both sides, demonstrating the economy required in print production. One image depicts two women and a girl gathering dandelions; the center figure’s head has been re-cut at a slightly later date. The other side is a book illustration, containing both text and images.

- SBMA Gallery Label, 2012