The impact of western science and technology on 'ukiyo-e' prints and book illustrations in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Japan.

Abstract

In the Edo period (c. 1600-1868), exposure to Western art, science and technology encouraged Japanese 'ukiyo-e' (pictures of the floating world) artists to experiment with Western perspective in woodblock prints and book illustrations. We can see its early influence in the work of Utagawa Hiroshige (1787-1858), as well as Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Unlike Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi lived to see the opening of the port of Yokohama to trade with the West in 1859. A whole genre of Yokohama prints emerged and one of the key artists was Utagawa Sadahide (1807-1873). In his illustrated books entitled 'Yokohama kaikō kenbunshi' (A Record of Things Seen and Heard in the Open Port of Yokohama) (1862), Sadahide plays with perspective in an effort to represent the dynamic changes that Japan was undergoing in its encounter with the West at the time. In the work of later artists such as Hiroshige III (1843-1894), Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) and Inoue Yasuji (1864-1889), we can see growing efforts to depict light, shadow and depth, and a continuing fascination with the steam locomotive and the changes occurring in the Tokyo-Yokohama region as Japan entered the Meiji period (1868-1912).