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125-511: Kinza ( 金座 ) was the Tokugawa shogunate 's officially sanctioned gold monopoly or gold guild ( za ) which was created in 1595. Initially, the Tokugawa shogunate was interested in assuring a consistent value in minted gold coins; and this led to the perceived need for attending to the supply of gold. This bakufu title identifies a regulatory agency with responsibility for supervising

250-481: A creative end in itself, and did not restrict their print media to the woodblock of traditional ukiyo-e. Prints from the late-20th and 21st centuries have evolved from the concerns of earlier movements, especially the sōsaku-hanga movement's emphasis on individual expression. Screen printing , etching , mezzotint , mixed media , and other Western methods have joined traditional woodcutting amongst printmakers' techniques. Early ukiyo-e artists brought with them

375-458: A dozen separate blocks to handle the different colours and half-tones. His restrained, graceful prints invoked the classicism of waka poetry and Yamato-e painting. The prolific Harunobu was the dominant ukiyo-e artist of his time. The success of Harunobu's colourful nishiki-e from 1765 on led to a steep decline in demand for the limited palettes of benizuri-e and urushi-e , as well as hand-coloured prints. A trend against

500-475: A fall in tax revenue in the early 1720s, as a result he pushed for the Kyoho reforms to repair the finances of the bakufu as he believed the military aristocracy was losing its power against the rich merchants and landowners. Society in the Tokugawa period , unlike in previous shogunates, was supposedly based on the strict class hierarchy originally established by Toyotomi Hideyoshi . The daimyō (lords) were at

625-474: A feudal system, with each daimyō administering a han (feudal domain), although the country was still nominally organized as imperial provinces . Under the Tokugawa shogunate, Japan experienced rapid economic growth and urbanization, which led to the rise of the merchant class and Ukiyo culture. The Tokugawa shogunate declined during the Bakumatsu period from 1853 and was overthrown by supporters of

750-411: A greater level of realism into his prints that emphasized the differences between the actor and the portrayed character. The expressive, contorted faces he depicted contrasted sharply with the serene, mask-like faces more common to artists such as Harunobu or Utamaro. Published by Tsutaya, Sharaku's work found resistance, and in 1795 his output ceased as mysteriously as it had appeared; his real identity

875-466: A long depression. These popular colour prints came to be called nishiki-e , or 'brocade pictures', as their brilliant colours seemed to bear resemblance to imported Chinese Shuchiang brocades , known in Japanese as Shokkō nishiki . The first to emerge were expensive calendar prints, printed with multiple blocks on very fine (or finer than standard) paper with heavy, opaque inks. These prints had

1000-631: A long history preceding these late-era masters. The Japanese landscape differed from the Western tradition in that it relied more heavily on imagination, composition, and atmosphere than on strict observance of nature. The self-proclaimed "mad painter" Hokusai (1760–1849) enjoyed a long, varied career. His work is marked by a lack of the sentimentality common to ukiyo-e, and a focus on formalism influenced by Western art. Among his accomplishments are his illustrations of Takizawa Bakin 's novel Crescent Moon  [ ja ] , his series of sketchbooks,

1125-589: A painter of the Kanō school, in the 1870s Chikanobu (1838–1912) turned to prints, particularly of the imperial family and scenes of Western influence on Japanese life in the Meiji period. Aside from Dutch traders, who had had trading relations dating to the beginning of the Edo period, Westerners paid little notice to Japanese art before the mid-19th century, and when they did they rarely distinguished it from other art from

1250-567: A particular influence on graphic designers and poster makers. Toulouse-Lautrec 's lithographs displayed his interest not only in ukiyo-e's flat colours and outlined forms, but also in their subject matter: performers and prostitutes. He signed much of this work with his initials in a circle, imitating the seals on Japanese prints. Other artists of the time who drew influence from ukiyo-e include Monet , La Farge , Gauguin , and Les Nabis members such as Bonnard and Vuillard . French composer Claude Debussy drew inspiration for his music from

1375-532: A refined sense to his portraits of graceful, slender courtesans, and left behind a number of noted students. With a fine line, Eishōsai Chōki ( fl. 1786–1808) designed portraits of delicate courtesans. The Utagawa school came to dominate ukiyo-e output in the late Edo period. Edo was the primary centre of ukiyo-e production throughout the Edo period. Another major centre developed in the Kamigata region of areas in and around Kyoto and Osaka . In contrast to

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1500-399: A remnant of an obsolescent era. Artists continued to produce occasional notable works, but by the 1890s the tradition was moribund. Synthetic pigments imported from Germany began to replace traditional organic ones in the mid-19th century. Many prints from this era made extensive use of a bright red, and were called aka-e ('red pictures'). Artists such as Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) led

1625-477: A series. The Hishikawa school attracted a large number of followers, as well as imitators such as Sugimura Jihei , and signalled the beginning of the popularization of a new artform. Torii Kiyonobu I and Kaigetsudō Ando became prominent emulators of Moronobu's style following the master's death, though neither was a member of the Hishikawa school. Both discarded background detail in favour of focus on

1750-470: A sophisticated knowledge of and training in the composition principles of classical Chinese painting ; gradually these artists shed the overt Chinese influence to develop a native Japanese idiom. The early ukiyo-e artists have been called "Primitives" in the sense that the print medium was a new challenge to which they adapted these centuries-old techniques—their image designs are not considered "primitive". Many ukiyo-e artists received training from teachers of

1875-521: A trend in the 1860s of gruesome scenes of murders and ghosts, monsters and supernatural beings, and legendary Japanese and Chinese heroes. His One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885–1892) depicts a variety of fantastic and mundane themes with a moon motif. Kiyochika (1847–1915) is known for his prints documenting the rapid modernization of Tokyo, such as the introduction of railways, and his depictions of Japan's wars with China and with Russia . Earlier

2000-540: Is an abbreviation of bakufu , meaning " military government "—that is, the shogunate. The han were the domains headed by daimyō . Beginning from Ieyasu's appointment as shogun in 1603, but especially after the Tokugawa victory in Osaka in 1615, various policies were implemented to assert the shogunate's control, which severely curtailed the daimyos' independence. The number of daimyos varied but stabilized at around 270. The bakuhan system split feudal power between

2125-500: Is still unknown. Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825) produced kabuki portraits in a style Edo townsfolk found more accessible, emphasizing dramatic postures and avoiding Sharaku's realism. A consistent high level of quality marks ukiyo-e of the late 18th-century, but the works of Utamaro and Sharaku often overshadow those other masters of the era. One of Kiyonaga's followers, Eishi (1756–1829), abandoned his position as painter for shōgun Tokugawa Ieharu to take up ukiyo-e design. He brought

2250-427: Is ukiyo-e; assertions that he was the genre's founder are especially common amongst Japanese researchers. At times Matabei has been credited as the artist of the unsigned Hikone screen , a byōbu folding screen that may be one of the earliest surviving ukiyo-e works. The screen is in a refined Kanō style and depicts contemporary life, rather than the prescribed subjects of the painterly schools. In response to

2375-561: The kanazōshi genre of tales of hedonistic urban life in the new capital. The rebuilding of Edo following the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657 occasioned a modernization of the city, and the publication of illustrated printed books flourished in the rapidly urbanizing environment. The term ukiyo ( 浮世 ) , which can be translated as 'floating world', was homophonous with the ancient Buddhist term ukiyo ( 憂き世 ) , meaning 'this world of sorrow and grief'. The newer term at times

2500-430: The chōnin class, who had become wealthy enough to afford to decorate their homes with them. The earliest ukiyo-e works emerged in the 1670s, with Hishikawa Moronobu 's paintings and monochromatic prints of beautiful women. Colour prints were introduced gradually, and at first were only used for special commissions. By the 1740s, artists such as Okumura Masanobu used multiple woodblocks to print areas of colour. In

2625-550: The machishū and divided the population into four social classes , with the ruling samurai class at the top and the merchant class at the bottom. While deprived of their political influence, those of the merchant class most benefited from the rapidly expanding economy of the Edo period, and their improved lot allowed for leisure that many sought in the pleasure districts—in particular Yoshiwara in Edo —and collecting artworks to decorate their homes, which in earlier times had been well beyond their financial means. The experience of

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2750-464: The Hokusai Manga , and his popularization of the landscape genre with Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji , which includes his best-known print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa , one of the most famous works of Japanese art. In contrast to the work of the older masters, Hokusai's colours were bold, flat, and abstract, and his subject was not the pleasure districts but the lives and environment of

2875-709: The Akita ranga painters of the 1770s—as were Chinese methods to create a sense of depth using a homogeny of parallel lines. The techniques sometimes appeared together in ukiyo-e works, geometrical perspective providing an illusion of depth in the background and the more expressive Chinese perspective in the fore. The techniques were most likely learned at first through Chinese Western-style paintings rather than directly from Western works. Long after becoming familiar with these techniques, artists continued to harmonize them with traditional methods according to their compositional and expressive needs. Other ways of indicating depth included

3000-573: The Azuchi–Momoyama period . After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to Tokugawa Ieyasu. While many daimyos who fought against him were extinguished or had their holdings reduced, Ieyasu was committed to retaining the daimyos and the han (domains) as components under his new shogunate. Daimyos who sided with Ieyasu were rewarded, and some of Ieyasu's former vassals were made daimyos and were located strategically throughout

3125-654: The Convention of Kanagawa in 1854, which opened Japan to the outside world after over two centuries of seclusion . Ukiyo-e prints were amongst the items he brought back to the United States. Such prints had appeared in Paris from at least the 1830s, and by the 1850s were numerous; reception was mixed, and even when praised ukiyo-e was generally thought inferior to Western works which emphasized mastery of naturalistic perspective and anatomy. Japanese art drew notice at

3250-489: The Edo period 's chōnin , allied themselves with the court and had power over local communities; their patronage of the arts encouraged a revival in the classical arts in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In the early 17th century, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616) unified the country and was appointed shōgun with supreme power over Japan. He consolidated his government in the village of Edo (modern Tokyo), and required

3375-467: The Ejima-Ikushima scandal of 1714. Kyoto native Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1750) painted technically refined pictures of courtesans. Considered a master of erotic portraits, he was the subject of a government ban in 1722, though it is believed he continued to create works that circulated under different names. Sukenobu spent most of his career in Edo, and his influence was considerable in both

3500-534: The Heian period (794–1185) had followed two principal paths: the nativist Yamato-e tradition, focusing on Japanese themes, best known by the works of the Tosa school ; and Chinese-inspired kara-e in a variety of styles, such as the monochromatic ink wash paintings of Sesshū Tōyō and his disciples. The Kanō school of painting incorporated features of both. Since antiquity, Japanese art had found patrons in

3625-860: The Imperial Court in the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Empire of Japan was established under the Meiji government , and Tokugawa loyalists continued to fight in the Boshin War until the defeat of the Republic of Ezo at the Battle of Hakodate in June 1869. Following the Sengoku period ("Warring States period"), the central government had been largely re-established by Oda Nobunaga during

3750-705: The Imperial Court in Kyoto to the Tokugawa family. While the Emperor officially had the prerogative of appointing the shōgun and received generous subsidies, he had virtually no say in state affairs. The shogunate issued the Laws for the Imperial and Court Officials ( kinchu narabini kuge shohatto 禁中並公家諸法度) to set out its relationship with the Imperial family and the kuge (imperial court officials), and specified that

3875-776: The International Exhibition of 1867 in Paris , and became fashionable in France and England in the 1870s and 1880s. The prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige played a prominent role in shaping Western perceptions of Japanese art. At the time of their introduction to the West, woodblock printing was the most common mass medium in Japan, and the Japanese considered it of little lasting value. Early Europeans promoters and scholars of ukiyo-e and Japanese art included writer Edmond de Goncourt and art critic Philippe Burty , who coined

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4000-725: The Kansei era (1789–1791). The ukiyo-e of the period of the Kansei Reforms brought about a focus on beauty and harmony that collapsed into decadence and disharmony in the next century as the reforms broke down and tensions rose, culminating in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Especially in the 1780s, Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) of the Torii school depicted traditional ukiyo-e subjects like beauties and urban scenes, which he printed on large sheets of paper, often as multiprint horizontal diptychs or triptychs . His works dispensed with

4125-544: The Kantō and Kansai regions . The paintings of Miyagawa Chōshun (1683–1752) portrayed early 18th-century life in delicate colours. Chōshun made no prints. The Miyagawa school he founded in the early-18th century specialized in romantic paintings in a style more refined in line and colour than the Kaigetsudō school. Chōshun allowed greater expressive freedom in his adherents, a group that later included Hokusai . Even in

4250-476: The gundai ( 郡代 ), the daikan ( 代官 ) and the kura bugyō ( 蔵奉行 ), as well as hearing cases involving samurai. The gundai managed Tokugawa domains with incomes greater than 10,000 koku while the daikan managed areas with incomes between 5,000 and 10,000 koku. The shogun directly held lands in various parts of Japan. These were known as shihaisho (支配所); since the Meiji period, the term tenryō ( 天領 , literally "Emperor's land") has become synonymous, because

4375-479: The han and the court in Edo. During their absences from Edo, it was also required that they leave their family as hostages until their return. The hostages and the huge expenditure sankin-kōtai imposed on each han helped to ensure loyalty to the shōgun . By the 1690s, the vast majority of daimyos would be born in Edo, and most would consider it their homes. Some daimyos had little interest in their domains and needed to be begged to return "home". In return for

4500-442: The jisha , kanjō , and machi-bugyō , which respectively oversaw temples and shrines , accounting, and the cities. The jisha-bugyō had the highest status of the three. They oversaw the administration of Buddhist temples ( ji ) and Shinto shrines ( sha ), many of which held fiefs. Also, they heard lawsuits from several land holdings outside the eight Kantō provinces. The appointments normally went to daimyōs ; Ōoka Tadasuke

4625-408: The rōjū to a more distant part of the castle. Some of the most famous soba yōnin were Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu and Tanuma Okitsugu . The ōmetsuke and metsuke were officials who reported to the rōjū and wakadoshiyori . The five ōmetsuke were in charge of monitoring the affairs of the daimyōs , kuge and imperial court. They were in charge of discovering any threat of rebellion. Early in

4750-427: The sankin-kōtai system ensured that daimyōs or their family were always in Edo, observed by the shogun. The shogunate had the power to discard, annex, and transform domains, although they were rarely and carefully exercised after the early years of the shogunate, to prevent daimyōs from banding together. The sankin-kōtai system of alternative residence required each daimyō to reside in alternate years between

4875-410: The shōgun . Under the wakadoshiyori were the metsuke . Some shōguns appointed a soba yōnin . This person acted as a liaison between the shōgun and the rōjū . The soba yōnin increased in importance during the time of the fifth shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi , when a wakadoshiyori, Inaba Masayasu , assassinated Hotta Masatoshi , the tairō . Fearing for his personal safety, Tsunayoshi moved

5000-408: The territorial lords to assemble there in alternate years with their entourages. The demands of the growing capital drew many male labourers from the country, so that males came to make up nearly seventy percent of the population. The village grew during the Edo period (1603–1867) from a population of 1800 to over a million in the 19th century. The centralized shogunate put an end to the power of

5125-564: The treaty ports of Nagasaki and Kanagawa (Yokohama). Source: Over the course of the Edo period, influential relatives of the shogun included: Ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna ; and erotica . The term ukiyo-e ( 浮世絵 ) translates as 'picture[s] of

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5250-644: The ōmetsuke evolved into one of passing orders from the shogunate to the daimyōs , and of administering to ceremonies within Edo Castle. They also took on additional responsibilities such as supervising religious affairs and controlling firearms. The metsuke , reporting to the wakadoshiyori , oversaw the affairs of the vassals of the shōgun . They were the police force for the thousands of hatamoto and gokenin who were concentrated in Edo. Individual han had their own metsuke who similarly policed their samurai. The san- bugyō (三奉行 "three administrators") were

5375-442: The 1630s. The late Tokugawa shogunate ( Japanese : 幕末 Bakumatsu ) was the period between 1853 and 1867, during which Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy called sakoku and modernized from a feudal shogunate to the Meiji government . The 1850s saw growing resentment by the tozama daimyōs and anti-Western sentiment following the arrival of a U.S. Navy fleet under the command of Matthew C. Perry (which led to

5500-399: The 1760s, the success of Suzuki Harunobu 's "brocade prints" led to full-colour production becoming standard, with ten or more blocks used to create each print. Some ukiyo-e artists specialized in making paintings, but most works were prints. Artists rarely carved their own woodblocks for printing; rather, production was divided between the artist, who designed the prints; the carver, who cut

5625-432: The 1770s, Utagawa Toyoharu produced a number of uki-e perspective prints that demonstrated a mastery of Western perspective techniques that had eluded his predecessors in the genre. Toyoharu's works helped pioneer the landscape as an ukiyo-e subject, rather than merely a background for human figures. In the 19th century, Western-style perspective techniques were absorbed into Japanese artistic culture, and deployed in

5750-431: The 20th century there was a revival in Japanese printmaking: the shin-hanga ('new prints') genre capitalized on Western interest in prints of traditional Japanese scenes, and the sōsaku-hanga ('creative prints') movement promoted individualist works designed, carved, and printed by a single artist. Prints since the late 20th century have continued in an individualist vein, often made with techniques imported from

5875-557: The East. Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg spent a year in the Dutch trading settlement Dejima , near Nagasaki, and was one of the earliest Westerners to collect Japanese prints. The export of ukiyo-e thereafter slowly grew, and at the beginning of the 19th century Dutch merchant-trader Isaac Titsingh 's collection drew the attention of connoisseurs of art in Paris. The arrival in Edo of American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 led to

6000-407: The Edo period, daimyōs such as Yagyū Munefuyu held the office. Soon, however, it fell to hatamoto with rankings of 5,000 koku or more. To give them authority in their dealings with daimyōs , they were often ranked at 10,000 koku and given the title of kami (an ancient title, typically signifying the governor of a province ) such as Bizen-no-kami . As time progressed, the function of

6125-417: The Edo period. They were ranked by size, which was measured as the number of koku of rice that the domain produced each year. One koku was the amount of rice necessary to feed one adult male for one year. The minimum number for a daimyō was ten thousand koku ; the largest, apart from the shōgun , was more than a million koku . The main policies of the shogunate on the daimyos included: Although

6250-495: The Emperor should dedicate to scholarship and poetry. The shogunate also appointed a liaison, the Kyoto Shoshidai ( Shogun's Representative in Kyoto ), to deal with the Emperor, court and nobility. Towards the end of the shogunate, however, after centuries of the Emperor having very little say in state affairs and being secluded in his Kyoto palace , and in the wake of the reigning shōgun , Tokugawa Iemochi , marrying

6375-405: The Kanō and other painterly schools. A defining feature of most ukiyo-e prints is a well-defined, bold, flat line. The earliest prints were monochromatic, and these lines were the only printed element; even with the advent of colour this characteristic line continued to dominate. In ukiyo-e composition forms are arranged in flat spaces with figures typically in a single plane of depth. Attention

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6500-474: The Meiji era. Following the deaths of Hokusai and Hiroshige and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e suffered a sharp decline in quantity and quality. The rapid Westernization of the Meiji period that followed saw woodblock printing turn its services to journalism, and face competition from photography. Practitioners of pure ukiyo-e became more rare, and tastes turned away from a genre seen as

6625-586: The Sunpu government's cabinet was consisted of trusted vassals of Ieyasu which was not included in Hidetada's cabinet. including William Adams (samurai) and Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn , which Ieyasu entrusted with foreign affairs and diplomacy. The earliest structure of Edo Shogunate organization has Buke Shitsuyaku as the highest rank. the earliest members of this office were Ii Naomasa , Sakakibara Yasumasa , and Honda Tadakatsu . The personal vassals of

6750-406: The Tokugawa clan in the Battle of Sekigahara had their estate reduced substantially. They were often placed in mountainous or far away areas, or placed between most trusted daimyos. Early in the Edo period, the shogunate viewed the tozama as the least likely to be loyal; over time, strategic marriages and the entrenchment of the system made the tozama less likely to rebel. In the end, however, it

6875-414: The Tokugawa shoguns were classified into two groups: By the early 18th century, out of around 22,000 personal vassals, most would have received stipends rather than domains. The rōjū ( 老中 ) were normally the most senior members of the shogunate. Normally, four or five men held the office, and one was on duty for a month at a time on a rotating basis. They supervised the ōmetsuke (who checked on

7000-554: The Tōkaidō and The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō , the latter a cooperative effort with Eisen. His work was more realistic, subtly coloured, and atmospheric than Hokusai's; nature and the seasons were key elements: mist, rain, snow, and moonlight were prominent parts of his compositions. Hiroshige's followers, including adopted son Hiroshige II and son-in-law Hiroshige III , carried on their master's style of landscapes into

7125-502: The West. Ukiyo-e was central to forming the West's perception of Japanese art in the late 19th century, particularly the landscapes of Hokusai and Hiroshige. From the 1870s onward, Japonisme became a prominent trend and had a strong influence on the early French Impressionists such as Edgar Degas , Édouard Manet and Claude Monet , as well as influencing Post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh , and Art Nouveau artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec . Japanese art since

7250-406: The aristocracy, military governments, and religious authorities. Until the 16th century, the lives of the common people had not been a main subject of painting, and even when they were included, the works were luxury items made for the ruling samurai and rich merchant classes. Later works appeared by and for townspeople, including inexpensive monochromatic paintings of female beauties and scenes of

7375-563: The bakufu prioritise civil administration, while civil society witnessed a surge in trade and industrial activities. Trade under the reign of Ieyasu saw much new wealth created by mining and goods manufacturing, which resulted in a rural population flow to urban areas. By the Genroku period (1688–1704) Japan saw a period of material prosperity and the blossoming of the arts, such as the early development of ukiyo-e by Moronobu . The reign of Tokugawa Yoshimune (1716–1745) saw poor harvests and

7500-404: The beginning of this approach as a movement. The movement favoured individuality in its artists, and as such has no dominant themes or styles. Works ranged from the entirely abstract ones of Kōshirō Onchi (1891–1955) to the traditional figurative depictions of Japanese scenes of Un'ichi Hiratsuka (1895–1997). These artists produced prints not because they hoped to reach a mass audience, but as

7625-538: The centralization, peace among the daimyos was maintained; unlike in the Sengoku period , daimyos no longer worried about conflicts with one another. In addition, hereditary succession was guaranteed as internal usurpations within domains were not recognized by the shogunate. The Tokugawa clan further ensured loyalty by maintaining a dogmatic insistence on loyalty to the shōgun . Daimyos were classified into three main categories: The tozama daimyos who fought against

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7750-518: The collapse of the Ashikaga shogunate . Ieyasu became the shōgun , and the Tokugawa clan governed Japan from Edo Castle in the eastern city of Edo ( Tokyo ) along with the daimyō lords of the samurai class. The Tokugawa shogunate organized Japanese society under the strict Tokugawa class system and banned most foreigners under the isolationist policies of Sakoku to promote political stability. The Tokugawa shoguns governed Japan in

7875-460: The common people at work. Established masters Eisen , Kuniyoshi , and Kunisada also followed Hokusai's steps into landscape prints in the 1830s, producing prints with bold compositions and striking effects. Though not often given the attention of their better-known forebears, the Utagawa school produced a few masters in this declining period. The prolific Kunisada (1786–1865) had few rivals in

8000-534: The country. The sankin-kotai policy, in an effort to constrain rebellions by the daimyos, mandated the housing of wives and children of the daimyos in the capital as hostages. In 1616, there was a failed attempt of the invasion of Taiwan by a Shogunate subject named Murayama Tōan . A long period of peace occurred between the Siege of Osaka in 1615 and the Keian Uprising in 1651. This period saw

8125-531: The daimyos), machi - bugyō (commissioners of administrative and judicial functions in major cities, especially Edo), ongoku bugyō  [ ja ] (遠国奉行, the commissioners of other major cities and shogunate domains) and other officials, oversaw relations with the Imperial Court in Kyoto , kuge (members of the nobility), daimyō, Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines , and attended to matters like divisions of fiefs . Other bugyō (commissioners) in charge of finances, monasteries and shrines also reported to

8250-519: The depiction of courtesans and actors. As a result, many ukiyo-e artists designed travel scenes and pictures of nature, especially birds and flowers. Landscapes had been given limited attention since Moronobu, and they formed an important element in the works of Kiyonaga and Shunchō . It was not until late in the Edo period that landscape came into its own as a genre, especially via the works of Hokusai and Hiroshige The landscape genre has come to dominate Western perceptions of ukiyo-e, though ukiyo-e had

8375-412: The dominance of Harunobu's idealism by focusing on contemporary urban fashions and celebrated real-world courtesans and geisha . Koryūsai was perhaps the most prolific ukiyo-e artist of the 18th century, and produced a larger number of paintings and print series than any predecessor. The Kitao school that Shigemasa founded was one of the dominant schools of the closing decades of the 18th century. In

8500-400: The earliest beni pink and vegetable green. A great self-promoter, Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764) played a major role during the period of rapid technical development in printing from the late 17th to mid-18th centuries. He established a shop in 1707 and combined elements of the leading contemporary schools in a wide array of genres, though Masanobu himself belonged to no school. Amongst

8625-479: The earliest monochromatic prints and books, colour was added by hand for special commissions. Demand for colour in the early-18th century was met with tan-e prints hand-tinted with orange and sometimes green or yellow. These were followed in the 1720s with a vogue for pink-tinted beni-e and later the lacquer-like ink of the urushi-e . In 1744, the benizuri-e were the first successes in colour printing, using multiple woodblocks—one for each colour,

8750-545: The floating world'. In 1603, the city of Edo ( Tokyo ) became the seat of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate . The chōnin class (merchants, craftsmen and workers), positioned at the bottom of the social order , benefited the most from the city's rapid economic growth. They began to indulge in and patronize the entertainment of kabuki theatre, geisha , and courtesans of the pleasure districts . The term ukiyo ('floating world') came to describe this hedonistic lifestyle. Printed or painted ukiyo-e works were popular with

8875-499: The following decades, and violators could receive harsh punishments. From 1799 even preliminary drafts required approval. A group of Utagawa-school offenders including Toyokuni had their works repressed in 1801, and Utamaro was imprisoned in 1804 for making prints of 16th-century political and military leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi . Utamaro ( c.  1753 –1806) made his name in the 1790s with his bijin ōkubi-e ('large-headed pictures of beautiful women') portraits, focusing on

9000-564: The forced opening of Japan). The major ideological and political factions during this period were divided into the pro-imperialist Ishin Shishi ( nationalist patriots ) and the shogunate forces; aside from the dominant two groups, other factions attempted to use the chaos of the Bakumatsu era to seize personal power. An alliance of daimyos and the emperor, succeeded in overthrowing the shogunate, which came to an official end in 1868 with

9125-399: The head and upper torso, a style others had previously employed in portraits of kabuki actors. Utamaro experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background. Utamaro's individuated beauties were in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been

9250-560: The human figure—kabuki actors in the yakusha-e of Kiyonobu and the Torii school that followed him, and courtesans in the bijin-ga of Ando and his Kaigetsudō school . Ando and his followers produced a stereotyped female image whose design and pose lent itself to effective mass production, and its popularity created a demand for paintings that other artists and schools took advantage of. The Kaigetsudō school and its popular "Kaigetsudō beauty" ended after Ando's exile over his role in

9375-433: The idealism of the prints of Harunobu and the Torii school grew following Harunobu's death in 1770. Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1793) and his school produced portraits of kabuki actors with greater fidelity to the actors' actual features than had been the trend. Sometime-collaborators Koryūsai (1735 – c.  1790 ) and Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820) were prominent depicters of women who also moved ukiyo-e away from

9500-517: The increasing demand for ukiyo-e works, Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694) produced the first ukiyo-e woodblock prints. By 1672, Moronobu's success was such that he began to sign his work—the first of the book illustrators to do so. He was a prolific illustrator who worked in a wide variety of genres, and developed an influential style of portraying female beauties. Most significantly, he began to produce illustrations, not just for books, but as single-sheet images, which could stand alone or be used as part of

9625-448: The innovations in his romantic, lyrical images were the introduction of geometrical perspective in the uki-e genre in the 1740s; the long, narrow hashira-e prints; and the combination of graphics and literature in prints that included self-penned haiku poetry. Ukiyo-e reached a peak in the late 18th century with the advent of full-colour prints, developed after Edo returned to prosperity under Tanuma Okitsugu following

9750-484: The late 18th century. The 19th century also saw the continuation of masters of the ukiyo-e tradition, with the creation of Hokusai 's The Great Wave off Kanagawa , one of the most well-known works of Japanese art, and Hiroshige 's The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō . Following the deaths of these two masters, and against the technological and social modernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e production went into steep decline. However, in

9875-723: The linework. The aesthetic of flat areas of colour contrasts with the modulated colours expected in Western traditions and with other prominent contemporary traditions in Japanese art patronized by the upper class, such as in the subtle monochrome ink brushstrokes of zenga brush painting or tonal colours of the Kanō school of painting. The colourful, ostentatious, and complex patterns, concern with changing fashions, and tense, dynamic poses and compositions in ukiyo-e are in striking contrast with many concepts in traditional Japanese aesthetics . Prominent amongst these, wabi-sabi favours simplicity, asymmetry, and imperfection, with evidence of

10000-583: The main vector of trade exchanges, followed by the addition of Dutch, English, and sometimes Spanish ships. From 1603 onward, Japan started to participate actively in foreign trade. In 1615, an embassy and trade mission under Hasekura Tsunenaga was sent across the Pacific to Nueva España (New Spain) on the Japanese-built galleon San Juan Bautista . Until 1635, the Shogun issued numerous permits for

10125-504: The merchant class. Peasant uprisings and samurai discontent became increasingly prevalent. Some reforms were enacted to attend to these issues such as the Kansei reform (1787–1793) by Matsudaira Sadanobu . He bolstered the bakufu's rice stockpiles and mandated daimyos to follow suit. He cut down urban spending, allocated reserves for potential famines, and urged city-dwelling peasants to return to rural areas. By 1800, Japan included five cities with over 100,000 residents, and three among

10250-412: The minting of gold coins and for superintending all gold mines, gold mining and gold-extraction activities in Japan. This Japanese history–related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara , ending the civil wars of the Sengoku period following

10375-482: The most powerful han , the hereditary fief of the House of Tokugawa, which also included many gold and silver mines. Towards the end of the shogunate, the Tokugawa clan held around 7 million koku of land (天領 tenryō), including 2.6–2.7 million koku held by direct vassals, out of 30 million in the country. The other 23 million koku were held by other daimyos. The number of han (roughly 270) fluctuated throughout

10500-400: The norm. By the end of the decade, especially following the death of his patron Tsutaya Jūzaburō in 1797, Utamaro's prodigious output declined in quality, and he died in 1806. Appearing suddenly in 1794 and disappearing just as suddenly ten months later, the prints of the enigmatic Sharaku are amongst ukiyo-e's best known. Sharaku produced striking portraits of kabuki actors, introducing

10625-530: The number of days for each month hidden in the design, and were sent at the New Year as personalized greetings, bearing the name of the patron rather than the artist. The blocks for these prints were later re-used for commercial production, obliterating the patron's name and replacing it with that of the artist. The delicate, romantic prints of Suzuki Harunobu (1725–1770) were amongst the first to realize expressive and complex colour designs, printed with up to

10750-406: The office, and alternated by month. Three Edo machi bugyō have become famous through jidaigeki (period films): Ōoka Tadasuke and Tōyama Kagemoto (Kinshirō) as heroes, and Torii Yōzō ( ja:鳥居耀蔵 ) as a villain. The san-bugyō together sat on a council called the hyōjōsho (評定所). In this capacity, they were responsible for administering the tenryō (the shogun's estates), supervising

10875-456: The offices close to the shōgun , such as soba yōnin  [ ja ] (側用人), Kyoto Shoshidai , and Osaka jōdai . Irregularly, the shōguns appointed a rōjū to the position of tairō (great elder). The office was limited to members of the Ii , Sakai , Doi , and Hotta clans , but Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu was given the status of tairō as well. Among the most famous was Ii Naosuke , who

11000-488: The passage of time; and shibui values subtlety, humility, and restraint. Ukiyo-e can be less at odds with aesthetic concepts such as the racy, urbane stylishness of iki . Ukiyo-e displays an unusual approach to graphical perspective, one that can appear underdeveloped when compared to European paintings of the same period. Western-style geometrical perspective was known in Japan—practised most prominently by

11125-467: The peasantry were set at fixed amounts that did not account for inflation or other changes in monetary value. As a result, the tax revenues collected by the samurai landowners increasingly declined over time. A 2017 study found that peasant rebellions and desertion lowered tax rates and inhibited state growth in the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, both the shogun and daimyos were hampered by financial difficulties, whereas more wealth flowed to

11250-517: The pleasure quarters was open to those of sufficient wealth, manners, and education. Woodblock printing in Japan traces back to the Hyakumantō Darani in 770 CE. Until the 17th century, such printing was reserved for Buddhist seals and images. Movable type appeared around 1600, but as the Japanese writing system required about 100,000 type pieces, hand-carving text onto woodblocks

11375-422: The poetic dreamscapes made by Harunobu, opting instead for realistic depictions of idealized female forms dressed in the latest fashions and posed in scenic locations. He also produced portraits of kabuki actors in a realistic style that included accompanying musicians and chorus. A law went into effect in 1790 requiring prints to bear a censor's seal of approval to be sold. Censorship increased in strictness over

11500-622: The prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige, most prominently in La mer (1905). Imagist poets such as Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound found inspiration in ukiyo-e prints; Lowell published a book of poetry called Pictures of the Floating World (1919) on oriental themes or in an oriental style. The travel sketchbook became a popular genre beginning about 1905, as the Meiji government promoted travel within Japan to have citizens better know their country. In 1915, publisher Shōzaburō Watanabe introduced

11625-407: The prospect of imminent poverty, buoyant and carefree, like a gourd carried along with the river current: this is what we call ukiyo . The earliest ukiyo-e artists came from the world of Japanese painting . Yamato-e painting of the 17th century had developed a style of outlined forms which allowed inks to be dripped on a wet surface and spread out towards the outlines—this outlining of forms

11750-605: The range of subjects in the Edo prints, those of Kamigata tended to be portraits of kabuki actors. The style of the Kamigata prints was little distinguished from those of Edo until the late 18th century, partly because artists often moved back and forth between the two areas. Colours tend to be softer and pigments thicker in Kamigata prints than in those of Edo. In the 19th century, many of the prints were designed by kabuki fans and other amateurs. The Tenpō Reforms of 1841–1843 sought to suppress outward displays of luxury, including

11875-453: The refined landscapes of such artists as Hokusai and Hiroshige , the latter a member of the Utagawa school that Toyoharu founded. This school was to become one of the most influential, and produced works in a far greater variety of genres than any other school. While the late 18th century saw hard economic times, ukiyo-e saw a peak in quantity and quality of works, particularly during

12000-473: The resignation of the 15th Tokugawa shogun , Tokugawa Yoshinobu , leading to the "restoration" ( 王政復古 , Ōsei fukko ) of imperial rule. Some loyal retainers of the shogun continued to fight during the Boshin war that followed but were eventually defeated in the notable Battle of Toba–Fushimi . The bakuhan system ( bakuhan taisei 幕藩体制 ) was the feudal political system in the Edo period of Japan. Baku

12125-491: The rōjū. The roju conferred on especially important matters. In the administrative reforms of 1867 ( Keiō Reforms ), the office was eliminated in favor of a bureaucratic system with ministers for the interior, finance, foreign relations, army, and navy. In principle, the requirements for appointment to the office of rōjū were to be a fudai daimyō and to have a fief assessed at 50 000 koku or more. However, there were exceptions to both criteria. Many appointees came from

12250-566: The same pair of hands. Kanae Yamamoto (1882–1946), then a student at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts , is credited with the birth of this approach. In 1904, he produced Fisherman using woodblock printing, a technique until then frowned upon by the Japanese art establishment as old-fashioned and for its association with commercial mass production. The foundation of the Japanese Woodcut Artists' Association in 1918 marks

12375-566: The shogun issued certain laws, such as the buke shohatto on the daimyōs and the rest of the samurai class, each han administered its autonomous system of laws and taxation . The shōgun did not interfere in a han 's governance unless major incompetence (such as large rebellions) was shown, nor were central taxes issued. Instead, each han provided feudal duties, such as maintaining roads and official courier stations, building canals and harbors, providing troops, and relieving famines. Daimyōs were strategically placed to check each other, and

12500-647: The shogun's lands were returned to the emperor. In addition to the territory that Ieyasu held prior to the Battle of Sekigahara, this included lands he gained in that battle and lands gained as a result of the Summer and Winter Sieges of Osaka . Major cities as Nagasaki and Osaka, and mines , including the Sado gold mine , also fell into this category. The gaikoku bugyō were administrators appointed between 1858 and 1868. They were charged with overseeing trade and diplomatic relations with foreign countries, and were based in

12625-468: The shogunate in Edo and the daimyōs with domains throughout Japan. The shōgun and lords were all daimyōs : feudal lords with their own bureaucracies, policies, and territories. Provinces had a degree of sovereignty and were allowed an independent administration of the han in exchange for loyalty to the shōgun , who was responsible for foreign relations, national security, coinage, weights, measures, and transportation. The shōgun also administered

12750-576: The shogunate, yielding a huge profit. Foreign trade was also permitted to the Satsuma and the Tsushima domains . Rice was the main trading product of Japan during this time. Isolationism was the foreign policy of Japan and trade was strictly controlled. Merchants were outsiders to the social hierarchy of Japan and were thought to be greedy. The visits of the Nanban ships from Portugal were at first

12875-496: The sister of Emperor Kōmei (r. 1846–1867), in 1862, the Imperial Court in Kyoto began to enjoy increased political influence. The Emperor would occasionally be consulted on various policies and the shogun even made a visit to Kyoto to visit the Emperor. Government administration would be formally returned from the shogun to the Emperor during the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Foreign affairs and trade were monopolized by

13000-677: The so-called " red seal ships " destined for the Asian trade. After 1635 and the introduction of seclusion laws ( sakoku ), inbound ships were only allowed from China , Korea , and the Netherlands . The primary source of the shogunate's income was the tax (around 40%) levied on harvests in the Tokugawa clan's personal domains (tenryō). No taxes were levied on domains of daimyos, who instead provided military duty, public works and corvee . The shogunate obtained loans from merchants, which were sometimes seen as forced donations, although commerce

13125-573: The term shin-hanga ("new prints") to describe a style of prints he published that featured traditional Japanese subject matter and were aimed at foreign and upscale Japanese audiences. Prominent artists included Goyō Hashiguchi , called the "Utamaro of the Taishō period " for his manner of depicting women; Shinsui Itō , who brought more modern sensibilities to images of women; and Hasui Kawase , who made modern landscapes. Watanabe also published works by non-Japanese artists, an early success of which

13250-458: The term Japonism . Stores selling Japanese goods opened, including those of Édouard Desoye in 1862 and art dealer Siegfried Bing in 1875. From 1888 to 1891 Bing published the magazine Artistic Japan in English, French, and German editions, and curated an ukiyo-e exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890 attended by artists such as Mary Cassatt . American Ernest Fenollosa

13375-408: The theatre and pleasure districts. The hand-produced nature of these shikomi-e ( 仕込絵 ) limited the scale of their production, a limit that was soon overcome by genres that turned to mass-produced woodblock printing . During a prolonged period of civil war in the 16th century, a class of politically powerful merchants developed. These machishū  [ ja ] , the predecessors of

13500-773: The time of the early Impressionists . Early painter-collectors incorporated Japanese themes and compositional techniques into their works as early as the 1860s: the patterned wallpapers and rugs in Manet 's paintings were inspired by the patterned kimono found in ukiyo-e pictures, and Whistler focused his attention on ephemeral elements of nature as in ukiyo-e landscapes. Van Gogh was an avid collector, and painted copies in oil of prints by Hiroshige and Eisen . Degas and Cassatt depicted fleeting, everyday moments in Japanese-influenced compositions and perspectives. ukiyo-e's flat perspective and unmodulated colours were

13625-417: The top, followed by the warrior-caste of samurai, with the farmers, artisans, and traders ranking below. In some parts of the country, particularly smaller regions, daimyō, and samurai were more or less identical, since daimyō might be trained as samurai, and samurai might act as local rulers. The largely inflexible nature of this social stratification system unleashed disruptive forces over time. Taxes on

13750-517: The tradition of making portrait prints of courtesans and actors. One of those rivals was Eisen (1790–1848), who was also adept at landscapes. Perhaps the last significant member of this late period, Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) tried his hand at a variety of themes and styles, much as Hokusai had. His historical scenes of warriors in violent combat were popular, especially his series of heroes from the Suikoden (1827–1830) and Chūshingura (1847). He

13875-469: The woodblocks; the printer, who inked and pressed the woodblocks onto handmade paper ; and the publisher, who financed, promoted, and distributed the works. As printing was done by hand, printers were able to achieve effects impractical with machines, such as the blending or gradation of colours on the printing block. Specialists have prized the portraits of beauties and actors by masters such as Torii Kiyonaga , Utamaro , and Sharaku that were created in

14000-457: The world's twenty cities that had more than 300,000 inhabitants. Edo likely claimed the title of the world's most populous city, housing over one million people. Followers of Catholic christians first began appearing in Japan during the 16th century. Oda Nobunaga embraced Christianity and the Western technology that was imported with it, such as the musket. He also saw it as a tool he could use to suppress Buddhist forces. Though Christianity

14125-492: Was a prominent Paris-based dealer of respected tastes whose Tokyo office was responsible for evaluating and exporting large quantities of ukiyo-e prints to the West in such quantities that Japanese critics later accused him of siphoning Japan of its national treasure. The drain first went unnoticed in Japan, as Japanese artists were immersing themselves in the classical painting techniques of the West. Japanese art, and particularly ukiyo-e prints, came to influence Western art from

14250-487: Was a set of Indian- and Japanese-themed prints in 1916 by the English Charles W. Bartlett (1860–1940). Other publishers followed Watanabe's success, and some shin-hanga artists such as Goyō and Hiroshi Yoshida set up studios to publish their own work. Artists of the sōsaku-hanga ('creative prints') movement took control of every aspect of the printmaking process—design, carving, and printing were by

14375-461: Was adept at landscapes and satirical scenes—the latter an area rarely explored in the dictatorial atmosphere of the Edo period; that Kuniyoshia could dare tackle such subjects was a sign of the weakening of the shogunate at the time. Hiroshige (1797–1858) is considered Hokusai's greatest rival in stature. He specialized in pictures of birds and flowers, and serene landscapes, and is best known for his travel series, such as The Fifty-three Stations of

14500-467: Was allowed to grow until the 1610s, Tokugawa Ieyasu soon began to see it as a growing threat to the stability of the shogunate. As Ōgosho ("Cloistered Shōgun "), he influenced the implementation of laws that banned the practice of Christianity. His successors followed suit, compounding upon Ieyasu's laws. The ban of Christianity is often linked with the creation of the Seclusion laws, or Sakoku , in

14625-494: Was an exception, though he later became a daimyō . The kanjō-bugyō were next in status. The four holders of this office reported to the rōjū . They were responsible for the finances of the shogunate. The machi-bugyō were the chief city administrators of Edo and other cities. Their roles included mayor, chief of the police (and, later, also of the fire department), and judge in criminal and civil matters not involving samurai. Two (briefly, three) men, normally hatamoto, held

14750-484: Was assassinated in 1860 outside the Sakuradamon Gate of Edo Castle ( Sakuradamon incident ). Three to five men titled the wakadoshiyori (若年寄) were next in status below the rōjū. An outgrowth of the early six-man rokuninshū (六人衆, 1633–1649), the office took its name and final form in 1662. Their primary responsibility was management of the affairs of the hatamoto and gokenin , the direct vassals of

14875-406: Was drawn to vertical and horizontal relationships, as well as details such as lines, shapes, and patterns such as those on clothing. Compositions were often asymmetrical, and the viewpoint was often from unusual angles, such as from above. Elements of images were often cropped , giving the composition a spontaneous feel. In colour prints, contours of most colour areas are sharply defined, usually by

15000-538: Was more efficient. In Saga, Kyoto  [ ja ] , calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and publisher Suminokura Soan  [ ja ] combined printed text and images in an adaptation of The Tales of Ise (1608) and other works of literature. During the Kan'ei era (1624–1643) illustrated books of folk tales called tanrokubon ('orange-green books') were the first books mass-produced using woodblock printing. Woodblock imagery continued to evolve as illustrations to

15125-538: Was often not taxed. Special levies were also imposed for infrastructure-building. During the earliest years of the Tokugawa shogunate institution, when Tokugawa Hidetada coronated as the second shogun and Ieyasu retired, they formed a dual governments, where Hidetada controlled the official court with the government central located in Edo city, Ieyasu, who now became the Ōgosho (retired shogun), also control his own informal shadow government which called "Sunpu government" with its center at Sunpu Castle . The membership of

15250-468: Was still the great tozama of Satsuma , Chōshū and Tosa , and to a lesser extent Saga , that brought down the shogunate. These four states are called the Four Western Clans, or Satchotohi for short. Regardless of the political title of the Emperor, the shōguns of the Tokugawa family controlled Japan. The shogunate secured a nominal grant of administration ( 体制 , taisei ) by

15375-602: Was the earliest Western devotee of Japanese culture, and did much to promote Japanese art—Hokusai's works featured prominently at his inaugural exhibition as first curator of Japanese art Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in Tokyo in 1898 he curated the first ukiyo-e exhibition in Japan. By the end of the 19th century, the popularity of ukiyo-e in the West drove prices beyond the means of most collectors—some, such as Degas , traded their own paintings for such prints. Tadamasa Hayashi

15500-472: Was to become the dominant style of ukiyo-e. Around 1661, painted hanging scrolls known as Portraits of Kanbun Beauties gained popularity. The paintings of the Kanbun era (1661–1673), most of which are anonymous, marked the beginnings of ukiyo-e as an independent school. The paintings of Iwasa Matabei (1578–1650) have a great affinity with ukiyo-e paintings. Scholars disagree whether Matabei's work itself

15625-454: Was used to mean 'erotic' or 'stylish', among other meanings, and came to describe the hedonistic spirit of the time for the lower classes. Asai Ryōi celebrated this spirit in the novel Ukiyo Monogatari ( Tales of the Floating World , c.  1661 ): [L]iving only for the moment, savouring the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms, and the maple leaves, singing songs, drinking sake, and diverting oneself just in floating, unconcerned by

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