Ukiyo-e: Life in the Floating World

• Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868): Brought peace and

stability to Japan both economically and politically.

• Edo (present-day Tokyo) is the capital during this time

• Paintings (called kanei) from this time period depicted people

from every class of society seeking pleasure through

entertainment districts.

• Later evolved into ukiyo-e paintings and, more famously woodblock

prints.

• Ukiyo-e often featured brothels, geisha, kabuki actors,

musicians, wrestlers and other forms of entertainment.

• Later in the development of ukiyo-e, beautiful women became favorite

subjects of artists.

• By the late eighteenth

century, ukiyo-e enters its

golden age

• Tall, graceful women are

most commonly featured

• Artists such as Torii

Kiyonaga

• New styles and artists

add to the subject matter

and style of ukiyo-e

• Kitagawa Utamaro,

Toshusai Sharaku,

Katsushika Hokusai, Ando

Hiroshige, Utagawa

Kuniyoshi.

• By the end of the Tokugawa period, ukiyo-e began to fall out

of style.

• In fact, many ukiyo-e paintings and prints were used to

package shipments of goods.

• Many westerners were introduced to the style of ukiyo-e because their

Japanese goods had arrived in crates full of paintings.

• Artists like Edgar Degas and Vincent van Gogh borrowed the

style and composition of ukiyo-e paintings in their own work.

Part One

• Views of beautiful scenery and of the towns and villages that dot the

Japanese countryside were also a very popular woodblock print

genre.

• Many of the most popular images from this genre were printed as

various series of views, such as Hokusai’s well known Thirty-six Views

of Mt. Fuji.

• Other images, such the series of scenes taken from the Tokkaido

Highway by artists including Hiroshige, Hokusai, and Kuniyoshi, include

views of the roads that were traveled by samurai warriors, farmers

taking their crops to market, and the merchants who moved their

goods around the country.

• For those who could afford it, travel for the sake of experience and religious

pilgrimage became increasingly more common and more popular as the road

system improved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Part Two

• As the name ukiyo-e suggests, many of the images created by

artists such as Hiroshige and Hokusai are portraits of the

people who populated ”the floating world”: the world of

pleasure and entertainment.

• This world includes actors, musicians, geisha, wrestlers and others

Part Three

• The hierarchical Tokugawa society provided designated spaces in which each of the four social classes lived.

• The highest level of the shogunate rulers resided in Edo, while each daimyo lords alternated residence between Edo and his home prefecture (state).

• The samurai warriors were ideally meant to be in the service of their daimyo lords, and their assigned space overlapped with their master’s.

• Farmers were legally bound to their land and to the rural countryside.

• Artisans peopled the villages and cities which dotted the Japanese countryside, as did merchants.

• This urban space and its population also became the often depicted subject and backdrop of many ukiyo-e prints.