When Kabuki plays became popular, people purchased Ukiyo-e portraits of Kabuki actors. Then came the colored depiction of slender beauties to promote courtesans. The evolution of Ukiyo-e prints can be traced from black and white prints that portrayed prostitutes entertaining wealthy clients. In contrast, Impressionists in Europe created their artworks one at a time and sold them at an expensive price usually to the upper class. In the Edo-period, common people were able to purchase this work at an affordable price. Ukiyo-e prints are woodblock templates that are used to reproduce more than 2,000 copies from the original wood block set. Later on, Ukiyo-e printing was integrated with Kawaraban woodblock printing and Ukiyo-e hanging scroll. Ukiyo-e mean's 'floating world', so these scrolls depicted the beauty of an imaginary world, like a dreamland. In the 18th Century, when woodblock newspapers became popular, Ukiyo-e hanging scrolls also captured the interest of the people. As many people were able to read and write, they were interested to know what’s happening and purchased wood-block print newspapers called Kawaraban. At that time, Japan’s literacy rate was more than 50％ which was the highest in the world, while England was at 14%. In the late 17 th Century, under the peaceful reign of Tokugawa shogunate, merchants, who were the lowest class of the social hierarchy, became wealthy.ĭuring that time, children of common people studied reading and writing at Terakoya schools operated by Buddhist priests. Let me start with its historical background. Ukiyo-e prints also had an especially great influence on Impressionists, such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne.

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese traditional printing which was established during the Edo period and became popular among ordinary people in the 17 th Century.

Japanese ukiyo e woodblock prints