My notes:
- Used to print books before movable type
- Moku hanga technique differs in that it uses water-based inks
- Water-based inks provide great transparency and vivid colours
- Books in woodblock printing were most likely monochrome one colour prints, sometimes art prints were 2-3.
- Drawing was drawn on paper, usually "washi", Japanese paper, and then glued onto wood, usually cherry and cut around accordingly.
- Very similar to letterpress, except the methods very temporary and manual. The press is obviously wood and not brass/metal.
- Sumizuri-e - the name to the first layer of monochrome, black ink
- Aizuri-e - adding added colours which aren't black, for example red or indigo
- Benizuri - e - added handpainted elements, for example red signatures
- Urushi - e - Thickening and emboldening the ink using glue
- Nishiki - e - Technical printing with seperate shapes and "screens" in the form of seperate blocks to colourise individual layers for a complicated finished piece
- Kento - the name given for registration marks to align woodblocks! Pretty ahead of their time.
- Edo Period sheet sizes - Chūban, Chūtanzaku, Hashira-e, Hosoban, Kakemono-e, Ōban, Ō-hosoban, Shikishiban
- Kakemono is the common size for hanging sheet paintings/prints.
- Tata-e = portrait
- Yoko-e = landscape
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Woodblock printing in Japan (Japanese: 木版画, moku hanga) is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-eartistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type, but was only widely adopted in Japan surprisingly late, during the Edo period (1603-1867). Although similar to woodcut in western printmaking in some regards, the moku hanga technique differs in that it uses water-based inks—as opposed to western woodcut, which often uses oil-based inks. The Japanese water-based inks provide a wide range of vivid colors, glazes, and transparency.
y the eleventh century, Buddhist temples in Japan produced printed books of sutras, mandalas, and other Buddhist texts and images. For centuries, printing was mainly restricted to the Buddhist sphere, as it was too expensive for mass production, and did not have a receptive, literate public as a market.
Not until 1590 was the first secular book printed in Japan. This was the Setsuyō-shū, a two-volume Chinese-Japanese dictionary.
rinting equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army from Korea in 1593 had far greater influence on the development of the medium. Four years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming shogun, effected the creation of the first native moveable type, using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts. As shogun, Ieyasu promoted literacy and learning, contributing to the emergence of an educated urban public.
An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant today.
By 1640 woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes.
The medium quickly gained popularity among artists, and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books.
Woodblock printing, though more tedious and expensive than later methods, was far less so than the traditional method of writing out each copy of a book by hand; thus, Japan began to see something of literary mass production.
The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, advice manuals, kibyōshi (satirical novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), art books, and play scripts for thejōruri (puppet) theatre. Often, within a certain genre, such as the jōruri theatre scripts, a particular style of writing became standard for that genre. For example, one person's personal calligraphic style was adopted as the standard style for printing plays.
Technique
The technique for printing texts and images was generally similar. The obvious differences were the volume produced when working with texts (many pages for a single work), and the complexity of multiple colors in some images. Images in books were almost always in monochrome (black ink only), and for a time art prints were likewise monochrome or done in only two or three colours.
The text or image was first drawn onto washi (Japanese paper), then glued onto a plank of wood, usually cherry. Wood was then cut away, based on the drawing outlines. A small wooden hard object called a baren was used to press or burnish the paper against the inked woodblock to apply the ink to the paper. Although this may have been done purely by hand at first, complex wooden mechanisms were soon invented and adopted to help hold the woodblock perfectly still and apply proper pressure in the printing process. This was especially helpful with the introduction of multiple colors that had to be applied with precision over previous ink layers.
The stages of this development follow:
- Sumizuri-e (墨摺り絵, "ink printed pictures")—monochrome printing using only black ink
- Benizuri-e (紅摺り絵, "crimson printed pictures")—red ink details or highlights added by hand after the printing process；green was sometimes used as well
- Tan-e (丹絵)—orange highlights using a red pigment called tan
- Aizuri-e (藍摺り絵, "indigo printed pictures"), Murasaki-e (紫絵, "purple pictures"), and other styles in which a single color was used in addition to, or instead of, black ink
- Urushi-e (漆絵)—a method that thickened the ink with glue, emboldening the image. Printers often used gold, mica, and other substances to enhance the image further.Urushi-e can also refer to paintings using lacquer instead of paint. Lacquer was rarely, if ever, used on prints.
- Nishiki-e (錦絵, "brocade pictures")—a method of using multiple blocks for separate portions of the image, using a number of colors to achieve complex and detailed images. A separate block was carved to apply only the part of the image designated for a single color. Registration marks called kentō (見当) were used to ensure correspondence between the application of each block.
FORMATS & SIZES
There were a number of standard sizes for prints in the Edo period, some of which follow. (All centimeter measurements are approximate.)
- Chūban (中判, middle size)(26x19cm)
- Chūtanzaku (中短冊)(38x13cm) - also known simply as tanzaku; half of an ōban, cut lengthwise
- Hashira-e (柱絵)(68-73 x 12–16 cm) - a narrow, upright format often called "pillar prints"
- Hosoban (細判)(33x15cm) - several hosoban was cut from an ō-ōban (大大判, large large size); hosoban was the smallest of the common sheet sizes.
- Kakemono-e (掛物絵)(76.5x23cm) - large, upright format comprised approximately of two ōban arranged one above the other. Kakemono also refers to hanging scroll paintings.
- Ōban (大判, large size)(39x26.5 cm) - the most common sheet size.
- Ō-hosoban (大細判)(38x17cm) - also known as Ō-tanzaku
- Shikishiban (21 x 18 cm) often used for surimono
The Japanese terms for vertical (portrait) and horizontal (landscape) formats for images are tate-e (立て絵) and yoko-e (横絵), respectively.
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