Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, but was only widely adopted in Japan in the seventeenth century. The technique is essentially the same as that which is called woodcut in Western printmaking. Japanese Woodblock Printing technique is used very widely for printing books in the same period. In Japanese art it is best known for its use in the ukiyo-e, which is the artistic genre of “pictures of the floating world” in Japanese meaning.


Ukiyo-e were affordable because they could be mass-produced. They were meant for mainly townsmen, who were generally not wealthy enough to afford an original painting. The original subject of ukiyo-e was city life, in particular activities and scenes from the entertainment district. Beautiful courtesans, bulky sumo wrestlers and popular actors would be portrayed while engaged in appealing activities. Later on landscapes also became popular. Political and sexual were not sanctioned subjects. In essence, it was an art closely connected with the pleasures of theatres, restaurants, teahouses, geisha and courtesans. Many ukiyo-e prints were in fact posters advertising theatre performances and brothels, or idol portraits of popular actors and beautiful teahouse girls. But this more or less sophisticated world of urban pleasures was also animated by the traditional Japanese love of nature, and ukiyo-e artists do have an enormous impact on landscape painting all over the world.