Chinese and Japanese Colour Wood-Block Printing

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The two main varieties of the Far-Eastern polychrome wood-block print, the Chinese and the Japanese, differ formally and technically as much as Chinese and Japanese painting. Although Japanese painting is a descendant of the Chinese example and, therefore, shares many of its ideas and rules, the accomplished painting reveals, here as there, the attitude particular to each of the two cultures. The uninitiated at first see what is obviously common to both of them. Thus, for many people, Chinese and Japanese art and Chinese and Japanese colour prints seem more or less the same and are often confused.