Departments
UKIYO-E
浮世絵
floating world pictures
The art of ukiyo-e thrived during the Edo Period (1603-1867). Most of the paintings in this category were done on woodblock (hanga / 版画). The “floating world pictures” seldom featured the ruling samurai class of the period. Instead, the art form captured the middle- and lower-class worlds of merchants, prostitutes, gamblers, and thieves. There are also many ukiyo-e paintings of natural landmarks like Mt. Fuji—and of course the springtime cherry blossoms.
Vast numbers of the ukiyo-e were sold to overseas collectors during the late nineteenth century. The ukiyo-e met with acclaim in Europe and the United States, but the paintings also established certain clichés about Japan in the Western psyche. Namely, the paintings imparted the notion that Japan was a land where legions of geishas idled away their days away, strolling past cherry blossom trees in the shadow of Mt. Fuji. Some of these clichés persisted well into the twentieth century.