Early, to 13th century Woodblock printing was invented in China under the
Tang dynasty, and eventually migrated to Japan in the late 700s, where it was first used to reproduce foreign literature. In 764 the
Empress Kōken commissioned one million small wooden pagodas, each containing a small woodblock scroll printed with a Buddhist text (
Hyakumantō Darani). These were distributed to temples around the country as thanks for the suppression of the
Emi Rebellion of 764. These are the earliest examples of woodblock printing known, or documented, from
Japan. By 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. However, an important set of fans of the late
Heian period (12th century), containing painted images and Buddhist sutras, reveals from loss of paint that the
underdrawing for the paintings was printed from blocks. In the
Kamakura period from the 12th century to the 13th century, many books were printed and published by woodblock printing at Buddhist temples in
Kyoto and
Kamakura. The printing press seized from Korea by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces in 1593 was also in use at the same time as the printing press from Europe. An edition of the
Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of
Emperor Go-Yōzei.
Tokugawa Ieyasu established a printing school at
Enko-ji in Kyoto and started publishing books using a domestic wooden movable type printing press instead of metal from 1599. Ieyasu supervised the production of 100,000 types, which were used to print many political and historical books. In 1605, books using a domestic copper movable type printing press began to be published, but copper type did not become mainstream after Ieyasu died in 1616. For aesthetic reasons, the
typeface of the , like that of traditional handwritten books, adopted the (
ja), in which several characters are written in succession with smooth brush strokes. As a result, a single typeface was sometimes created by combining two to four
semi-cursive and
cursive kanji or
hiragana characters. In one book, 2,100 characters were created, but 16% of them were used only once. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, craftsmen soon decided that the semi-cursive and cursive script style of Japanese writings was better reproduced using woodblocks. By 1640, woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes. After the 1640s, movable type printing declined, and books were mass-produced by conventional woodblock printing during most of the
Edo period.
Later Edo period (colored woodblock print) series depicting a class at terakoya'' (private educational school) The mass production of woodblock prints in the
Edo period was due to the high literacy rate of Japanese people in those days. The literacy rate of the Japanese in the Edo period was due to the spread of private schools
terakoya. There were more than 600 rental bookstores in
Edo, and people lent woodblock-printed illustrated books of various genres. While the Saga Books were printed on expensive paper and used various embellishments, being printed specifically for a small circle of literary connoisseurs, other printers in Edo quickly adapted the conventional woodblock printing to produce cheaper books in large numbers, for more general consumption. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, gardening books, cookbooks,
kibyōshi (satirical novels),
sharebon (books on urban culture),
kokkeibon (comical books),
ninjōbon (romance novel),
yomihon,
kusazōshi, art books, play scripts for the kabuki and
jōruri (puppet) theatre, etc. The best-selling books of this period were
Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (Life of an Amorous Man) by
Ihara Saikaku,
Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by
Takizawa Bakin, and
Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige by
Jippensha Ikku, and these books were reprinted many times.
based on kabuki actors became popular. Ichikawa Danjūrō V in the popular kabuki play Shibaraku'', by
Utagawa Kunimasa, 1796 From the 17th century to the 19th century,
ukiyo-e depicting secular subjects became very popular among the common people and were mass-produced.
ukiyo-e is based on
kabuki actors,
sumo wrestlers, beautiful women, landscapes of sightseeing spots, historical tales, and so on, and
Hokusai and
Hiroshige are the most famous artists. In the 18th century,
Suzuki Harunobu established the technique of multicolor woodblock printing called
nishiki-e and greatly developed Japanese woodblock printing culture such as
ukiyo-e.
Ukiyo-e influenced European
Japonisme and
Impressionism. in Shiba
. From series Twenty Views of Tōkyō'' by
Hasui Kawase, a
shin-hanga artist. Many publishing houses arose and grew, publishing both books and single-sheet prints. One of the most famous and successful was
Tsuta-ya. A publisher's ownership of the physical woodblocks used to print a given text or image constituted the closest equivalent to a concept of "
copyright" that existed at this time. Publishers or individuals could buy woodblocks from one another, and thus take over the production of certain texts, but beyond the ownership of a given set of blocks (and thus a very particular representation of a given subject), there was no legal conception of the ownership of ideas. Plays were adopted by competing theaters, and either reproduced wholesale, or individual plot elements or characters might be adapted; this activity was considered legitimate and routine at the time.
From Meiji period onwards After the decline of
ukiyo-e and the introduction of modern printing technologies, woodblock printing continued as a method for printing texts as well as for producing art, both within traditional modes such as
ukiyo-e and in a variety of more radical or Western forms that might be construed as
modern art. In the early 20th century,
shin-hanga that fused the tradition of
ukiyo-e with the techniques of Western paintings became popular, and the works of
Hasui Kawase and
Hiroshi Yoshida gained international popularity. Institutes such as the "Adachi Institute of Woodblock Prints" and "Takezasado" continue to produce ukiyo-e prints with the same materials and methods as used in the past. '' by
Hiroshi Yoshida. With the entry into modernity, in Japan, there was a renewal of woodblock printmaking, the
hanga. After the death of Hiroshige in 1858, the
ukiyo-e practically disappeared. Its last manifestations correspond to
Goyō Hashiguchi, who already shows a clear Western influence in the realism and plastic treatment of his images. With the entry into the 20th century, the artists who practiced engraving evolved to a style more in line with modern Japanese taste. One of its first exponents was
Hiroshi Yoshida, author of landscapes influenced by nineteenth-century English watercolor. In 1918 the Nippon Sōsaku Hanga Kyōkai (Japan Printmaking Artists' Association) was founded, a group of artists who synthesized traditional Japanese painting with the new Western aesthetic. Notable among its members were
Kōshirō Onchi,
Un'ichi Hiratsuka and
Shikō Munakata. The first, influenced by
Vasili Kandinsky, was the first to produce abstract engravings, of a style however distinctly oriental for its chromaticism of soft tones and for its lyricism and imagination. Hiratsuka was more traditional in technique and choice of subjects, with a preference for black and white monochrome, in themes ranging from Buddhism to landscapes and popular scenes, in which he combined traditional methods with modern effects. Munakata was noted for his original, personal and expressive work, with an unmistakable stamp. He also focused on Buddhist themes, generally also monochrome, but with a free, carefree style, with a careless appearance but of great vitality. ==Technique==