Japanese Ukiyo-e Research Articles

An Analysis of the Cultural Differences between China and Japan, Using the Example of Gleaning Shellfish at the Falling Tide and Busy with Crops

The two works, 'Gathering Shells at Falling Tide' and 'Busy with Crops', represent two different cultures and the context of their times. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, traditional Chinese woodblock painting techniques reached their peak, and the carving techniques also influenced Japan, a country separated from China by sea, with a profound impact on the development and evolution of Japanese ukiyo-e. Analyzing their works to find the similarities and differences between the two cultures in the same historical period is conducive to a better understanding and development of their respective cultures.

우키요에의 인지도를 활용한 한일 풍속화 공동 전시 콘텐츠 필요성 고찰

The purpose of this study is to discuss the functions and meanings that Ukiyoe could present to various publics. Ukiyoe is a painting that focuses on depicting reality rather than depicting the ideal world, past, and future. Based on woodblock prints, Ukiyoe pursues mass production, securing price competitiveness through low prices, depicting original desires, popularity, playfulness, and carpe diem tendencies. Just as Japanese Ukiyoe has the function of securing the positivity of painful reality, Korean genre paintings of the Joseon Dynasty also have the function of restoring the positivity of reality. While the former gained worldwide popularity and fashion and exerted an influence on Western Impressionist painters, the latter has less recognition. In the era of globalization, where cultural products with regional distinctive characteristics are competitive, Korean folklore and Japanese Ukiyoe have unique values. Therefore, it is necessary to promote active cultural exchange, increase awareness, meet the demands of tourism consumers, and revitalize the local economy by holding expositions and joint exhibition event contents in the pavilion to promote the customs of both countries by using the awareness of Ukiyoe.

A Probe into the Artistic Style of Aubrey Beardsley

This paper explores the artistic style of British artist Beardsley from three different aspects. Beardsley's unique style of Art Deco is formed by his absorption of Japanese Ukiyo-e's style and features, the coordinated proportion of the picture composition and the use of black and white blocks. In addition, the beautiful and gorgeous painting style and the expression of the theme of "evil" constitute the artistic characteristics of decadentism. At the same time, the creation of female images in the works of Aubrey Beardsley also shows a rebellion against the ideal female images in the Victorian era.

An Analysis of the Status of Japanese Zen Art Aesthetics in Ukiyo-e from Katsushika Hokusai to Van Gogh

Japanese Zen aesthetics extends empty aesthetics to non-literature and art, using painting as an art form to express the unique Japanese aesthetics and the embodiment of Japanese Zen aesthetics in the artist's life experience. By combining traditional Japanese aesthetics with Zen aesthetics, the creators of Ukiyo-e have a god-like perspective that allows them to see everything in the world. The integration of Japanese Zen culture with Chinese Zen, history, and art directly influenced the development of Japanese Ukiyo-e art. This influence, and even a deep monopoly, has influenced the work of two hundred and sixty years of Ukiyo-e artists, from content to effects. These even affected the western art field across the ocean; for example, Van Gogh was keen on such an expression with the concepts of "mono no aware", "wabi-sabi", and "yugen". Through the development history of Ukiyo-e and the specific analysis of Katsushika Hokusai's Ukiyo-e paintings and his influences on Van Gogh, this paper has a detailed understanding, that is to say, all signs indicate the inestimable role of Japanese Zen aesthetics. In Ukiyo-e, the art of the Japanese Zen aesthetic appears in front of the world, along the following path: half-awake self-discipline, as in China's Song dynasty, painting white space aesthetics, thinking of extremely pure appeal, and harmony between man and nature, man and man, and nature and nature.

The influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e on Western painting art in the 19th Century

Ukiyo had a profound influence on western painting in the 19th century. It can be seen from the works of Artists such as Monet and Van Gogh that they extensively used, imitated and improved Japanese Ukiyo techniques such as brushwork, composition and color. In addition, under the historical background and social environment at that time, the expression of thoughts and emotions was also greatly influenced by Ukiyo. This paper, starting from the origin and characteristics of Japanese Ukiyo, explains in detail the influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e on western painting in the 19th century, explores the way of expression of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works, analyzes the process of its absorption and re-innovation of Ukiyo-e, in order to provide some reference for modern painting creation. This paper explores the influence of Japanese Ukiyo on western painting in the 19th century in two chapters. First of all, from the origin of Japanese Ukiyo, style, techniques, representatives of the detailed interpretation of Japanese Ukiyo artistic characteristics; Secondly, based on the background of the introduction and integration of Ukiyo in western painting art, the paintings of Monet and Van Gogh, the representative painters of Impressionism and post-Impressionism, are extracted respectively, so as to explore the influence of Japanese Ukiyo on western painting art in the 19th century in terms of style, techniques and ideas.

Contrastive Study of the Images of Figures of Ladies in the Tang Dynasty and Japanese Ukiyoe Beauty Paintings

Contrastive Study of the Images of Figures of Ladies in the Tang Dynasty and Japanese Ukiyoe Beauty Paintings

Intuitively Searching for the Rare Colors from Digital Artwork Collections by Text Description: A Case Demonstration of Japanese Ukiyo-e Print Retrieval

In recent years, artworks have been increasingly digitized and built into databases, and such databases have become convenient tools for researchers. Researchers who retrieve artwork are not only researchers of humanities, but also researchers of materials science, physics, art, and so on. It may be difficult for researchers of various fields whose studies focus on the colors of artwork to find the required records in existing databases, that are color-based and only queried by the metadata. Besides, although some image retrieval engines can be used to retrieve artwork by text description, the existing image retrieval systems mainly retrieve the main colors of the images, and rare cases of color use are difficult to find. This makes it difficult for many researchers who focus on toning, colors, or pigments to use search engines for their own needs. To solve the two problems, we propose a cross-modal multi-task fine-tuning method based on CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training), which uses the human sensory characteristics of colors contained in the language space and the geometric characteristics of the sketches of a given artwork in order to gain better representations of that artwork piece. The experimental results show that the proposed retrieval framework is efficient for intuitively searching for rare colors, and that a small amount of data can improve the correspondence between text descriptions and color information.

한일 풍속화 이벤트 전시를 통한 문화관광 교류 활성화 고찰

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to discuss ways to expand cultural tourism exchanges as well as improve the rigid relationship between the two countries by using Korean genre painting and Japanese Ukiyoe. Design, data, and methodology - Unlike traditional art enjoyed by the elite, Korean-Japanese genre painting has in common that it is a culture led by the common people. Based on these common points, this study intends to explore ways to utilize the fun, play culture, and value that Korean and Japanese genre painting can provide to modern people through event exhibition experience. Result - Korean-Japanese genre painting can provide emotional stability to modern people suffering from mental stress through elements of humor and satire. The event exhibition experience can materialize the value as a tourism product while providing a variety of experience programs to visitors by utilizing the function of genre painting. Conclusions -The purpose of this study is to discuss ways to expand cultural tourism exchanges as well as improve the rigid relationship between the two countries by using Korean genre painting and Japanese Ukiyoe.

Hikifuda, or What Japanese Advertising Looked Like at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Collection from the Russian State Art Library)

Hikifuda are woodcut or lithograph prints that retailers and wholesalers, mercantile agencies, and other organizations in Japan of the Meiji era (1868–1912) used as advertising materials. The Meiji era was the period of great Japanese transformation from a medieval country into a modern power which was treated by European countries as equal. As a result, the new type of advertisement helped in spreading western ideas and lifestyles among the residents. Besides, the low price and mass production of the leaflets is another reason for their high popularity along with in whole Japan. The hikifuda handbills gave start to a new stage in the Japanese advertising industry and developed means of communication, connected Japanese traditional art with European modern trade tendencies. They have a great variety of subjects, which contain deep symbols and signs related to Japanese history and culture: traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e engravings: Women in kimono, children, the Seven Gods of Fortune Ebisu, Daikokuten, Benzaiten and others, dragons and mount Fuji and other various symbols. Besides traditional Japanese symbols, telephones, telegraph poles, mailboxes, European clothing stores, and even tobacco shops were depicted as signs of the influence of the Western lifestyle on the Japanese economy, politics, culture, and everyday life. The research is based on materials from the collection of the RSAL Iconography Department that hosts various samples of hikifuda advertising leaflets. Presumably, they were produced in the early 20th century by the Osaka printing workshop. Japanese advertising leaflets in the Russian State Art Library (RSAL) collection represent an interesting, but still poorly researched layer of urban art in Japan at the turn of the 19th—20th century.

Rise and Reappraisal of Genre Paintings by Sin Yun-bok in the Japanese Colonial Period

It was not until critiques began to seriously make written remarks in the Japanese Colonial period that Sin Yun-bok (act. fl. the early nineteenth century) and his genre paintings received due attention. For example, Chōsen shogaka retsuden (Lives of Eminent Painters and Calligraphers of Joseon) and Geunyeok seohwa jing (Biographical Records of Korean Painters and Calligraphers), published in the 1910s and 20s, are the earliest ones to provide short accounts on Sin’s life and virtuosity in genre paintings. Publications of the 1930s—including Chōsen meiga tenrankai mokuroku (Exhibition Catalogue of Joseon Fine Paintings) and Joseon Joongang Ilbo—assess that Sin’s works are the Korean genre painting par excellence or, from a different perspective, Ukiyoeesque. The recognition of Sin’s depictions of commoner’s daily lives as tours de force extended to an encomium by Gim Yongjun (1904~1967) who saw the painter “the greatest artist with revolutionary spirits.” On the other hand, the stylistic interpretation associating the paintings of everyday life to Japanese Ukiyo-e prints brought to mind his pejorative epithet as a painter of yeosok (lit. lives of common women; or girly things), the reputation which Mun Il-pyeong (1888~1939) consolidated with a comment in Hoam jeonjip (Complete Collection of Hoam’s [Mun’s] Writings) that “[Sin] was ousted from the Royal Painting Academy while painting overly vulgar things.”These written accounts resulted from the growing popularity of Sin Yun-bok’s genre paintings as they met both socio-political demands of the Colonial rule and aesthetic preferences of the public in those days. Particularly in the 1930s, the disclosure of Hyewon jeonsin cheop album (Genre Paintings by Hyewon [Sin Yun-bok]) has prodded the then intellectuals into reviewing and critiquing the painter. Meanwhile, the general audience saw Sin’s works as nostalgia for Joseon traditions or intuitively as erotic images. The eroticism of Sin’s genre paintings was thrown into bold relief by later epigones. An album Genre Paintings purchased by Hermann Sander (1868~1945) contains a leaf that imitates A Widow’s Lust in Spring in the Hyewon album; and similar imitations are discovered in an anonymous album Musan kwaeu cheop, the Unu docheop by Choe Useok, and another anonymous album Sokwacheop. The repetition suggests that the images from the Hyewon album have been so widely circulated since the late nineteenth or early twentieth century as to be used for the pornographic painting albums. When Sin Yun-bok and the Hyewon album reached an even wider audience in the colonial period, pornographic albums under the false authorship of Sin Yun-bok or Hyewon came out in considerable numbers. These phenomena have further enhanced the erotic aspects of Sin’s paintings, eventually contributing to a current notion that Sin Yun-bok is reckoned with a painter of yeosok or of pornographic images.

Ukiyo-e between Pop Art and (Trans)cultural Appropriation: On the Art of Muhamed Kafedžić (Muha)

This article is based on a curatorial study of Muhamed Kafedžic’s oeuvre and our collaboration between 2012 and 2015. The work examines the paintings of the Sarajevo-based artist and questions the meaning and applicability of cultural appropriation theories to his work. The goal is to present a complex procedure of the appropriation of processes and styles in art history, usingin Kafedžic’s example of a hybrid of Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock printing (17th–19th centuries) and American pop art painting (20th century), predominantly in the style of Roy Lichtenstein. My intention is to emphasize how Muha’s artwork has an element of dislocation, or outside-ness, in both place and national tradition, which consequently develops into a trans-cultural perspective, using Japanese (pop) art as a trans-national networking point.

Linked data driven multilingual access to diverse Japanese Ukiyo-e databases by generating links dynamically

Linked data driven multilingual access to diverse Japanese Ukiyo-e databases by generating links dynamically

Pictures of a Floating World. The Philadelphia Inquirer Seeks a Community Calling in Cyberspace

As The Philadelphia Inquirer attempts to find a suitable web structure to advance a strategy of breaking news “firsts,” hyper-locality, and virtual community news hubbing in cyberspace, this article explores the theoretical and practical contradictions the Inquirer faces as it reinvents its news and visual imprint. The article also compares the Internet and its growing, untethered news readership(s) to the ‘floating world’ of Japanese Ukiyo-e artwork. Such is socially engaging, bourgeois, and hypercommunicative with a minimal use of text.

ゴッホと浮世絵を例にした絵画の情報可視化

ゴッホと浮世絵を例にした絵画の情報可視化

Lifespan Creativity in a Non-Western Artistic Tradition: A Study of Japanese Ukiyo-E Printmakers

Western cultures' conceptions about creativity emphasize originality and final products; Eastern cultures, skill and process. Does this cultural difference impact how creativity unfolds over the lifespan? To examine this, we investigated Japanese "ukiyo-e" printmaking (c. 1670-1865). Almost 2,000 illustrations of datable prints by 44 artists were found in 36 art books. Career landmarks (earliest, most frequent, and latest illustrated print) and eminence ratings were estimated for each artist. Results are largely consistent with prior research on Western samples: artists' career peaks vary greatly, averaging around age 40, and the most prolific artists usually (but not always) created the most popular prints. However, ukiyo-e artists show a more positive relation between career peak and eminence than Western artists, peak slightly later than their French (but not American) counterparts, and older artists created the most famous prints, compared to the West. Trans-historically, early-peaking ukiyo-e artists are concentrated between 1780 and 1800.

E-Press and Oppress

E-Press and Oppress