November 1, 2012
Annariina's Edo Tokyo Museum thoughts
On Wednesday all of us exchange students went to Edo Tokyo Museum at Ryogoku. What impressed me the most in the museum was ukiyoe, wood block prints.
A scale replica of what a print shop would have looked like in the Edo period.
Ukiyoe is made by carving the block of wood so the wanted part of the picture will stand out, this will be repeated as many times as there are colors to be used. The carving must also be carved mirrored to the desired image, so for example when craving a text in kanji characters it’s not hard only because it needs to be small, but also that it needs to be done the opposite way than normally written.
What is surprising is that ukiyoe wasn’t considered very precious, it was cheap and often used as wrapping paper. The ukiyoe artist needed to do tons of prints to get a decent amount of money out of it. It was interesting that something that was so difficult to make was considered to be cheap and common. [Peter- the cheap and common factor was that many of the woodblocks would be reused constantly. Interestingly, this reuse of printing material also featured prominently in the creation of anime, and in some ways still persists to this day!]