   ukiyo-e, or ukiyo-ye (; ; "pictures of the floating world"), is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that flourished in japan from the 17th through 19th centuries. aimed at the prosperous merchant class in the urbanizing edo period (1603â1867), depictions of beautiful women; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica were amongst the popular themes. edo (modern tokyo) became the seat of government for the military dictatorship in the early 17th century. the merchant class at the bottom of the social order found themselves the greatest beneficiaries of the city's rapid economic growth. many indulged in the entertainments of kabuki theatre, courtesans, and geisha of the pleasure districts. the term ukiyo ("floating world") came to describe this hedonistic lifestyle. printed or painted "ukiyo-e" images of this environment emerged in the late 17th century; they were popular with the merchant class, who had become wealthy enough to afford to decorate their homes with such works. the earliest success was in the 1670s with moronobu's paintings and monochromatic prints of beautiful women. colour prints came graduallyâat first added by hand and only for special commissions. by the 1740s, artists such as masanobu used multiple woodblocks to print areas of colour. from the 1760s, the success of harunobu's "brocade prints" led to full-colour production becoming standard, each print made with ten or more blocks. the peak period in terms of quantity and quality was marked by portraits of beauties and actors by masters such as kiyonaga, utamaro, and sharaku in the late 18th century. this peak was followed in the 19th century by a pair of masters best remembered for their landscapes: the bold formalist hokusai, whose great wave off kanagawa is one of the best-known works of japanese art; and the serene, atmospheric hiroshige, most noted for the series the fifty-three stations of the tÅkaidÅ. following the deaths of these two masters, and against the technological and social modernization that followed the meiji restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e production went into steep decline. some ukiyo-e artists specialized in making paintings, but most works were prints. artists rarely carved their own woodblocks for printing; rather, production was divided between the artist, who designed the prints; the carver, who cut the woodblocks; the printer, who inked and pressed the woodblocks onto hand-made paper; and the publisher, who f
Arts_in_Japan Japanese_words_and_phrases Printmaking Schools_of_Japanese_art Ukiyo-e