publishing business in 1852, but of another publisher, Daikokuya Heikichi, it is known that the publishing firm was in operation for 167 years until Heikichi V passed away in 1931.
In order to assist consumers in identifying the sources of their prints and to increase the possibility of making them returning customers, publishers marked their prints with their trademark. Publisher trademarks appeared in a wide range of styles depending on a number of factors like the time of publication. Today, this makes publishing seals a means to assist in dating prints from a time when date seals were not in use. The trademark on a print could have been a logo without an obvious connection to a specific publisher up to an elaborate description of the publishers’ merits including his full name and address. To return to the previous example Tsuruya Kiemon, Tsuruya Kiemon actually was the firm name, lit.: Kiemon’s Crane Shop. His trade mark was Tsuruki and the official name of the publishing house was Senkakudō (lit.: Immortal Crane Hall). His family name was Kobayashi, making his personal name Kobayashi Kiemon. The trademark on a print could incorporate any of these names and some publishers even created different seals for each print of a multi-sheet series.
Print series are important elements of this art form. Japanese woodblock prints developed from book illustrations, sequential, interconnected images that tell a story. These images became dissociated from the text and released from their bound form to be published as untitled sets called kumimono. At first, actor prints were not serialized but singularly issued after a successful performance. Series of actors only started to appear in the second half of the eighteenth century. In the beginning, prints of beautiful women proved to be more suitable for serialization and a wide range of devices like the Eight Views (hakkei) developed. Generally speaking, series are a clever invention by the publishers to bind consumers to their products. Titled series of prints with related designs were created to encourage customer’s loyalty. In the past but also today, consumers were inclined to complete the series once another design got available.
Kunisada. 1854. “Fifty-four— Dream of Ukihashi” (Gojūyon—Yume no ukihashi), from an untitled series “A Comparison of Present Genji Brocade Prints” (Ima Genji nishiki-e awase). Chūban. Publisher: Sanoya Kihei. Library of Congress.
In the following chapters, print designers and publishers are presented who created important single prints as well as print series from the mid-seventeenth up to the early twentieth century. Whenever possible, biographical details are given as well as lists of their major works. Representative works by each designer and publisher will provide visual access to them. The artists are listed in chronological order, thus creating a historical overview of Japanese woodblock prints from Kiyonobu (1664–1729) until Kokunimasa (1874–1944).
Note to Readers
The selection of artists and publishers is based upon their activity and importance to the history of Japanese woodblock prints from the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century.
Artists
The artists are presented in a chronological order, to provide a visual account of the development of Japanese woodblock prints from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The name of the artist used in the header reflects the best-known name, e.g. Hokusai and not Shunrō, Iitsu etc. The Japanese name system for artists during the Edo period was extremely complex. Apart from family names (uji), we distinguish between childhood names (yōmyō) and given/common names (zokushō/ zokumyō). Print artists had special artist surnames (gasei) reflecting the painting tradition they followed (ha), e.g. Torii, Utagawa, or Kikugawa. Artist names (azana) such as Toyokuni or Kunisada were preceded by various art names (gagō) that frequently ended in -sai or -tei like Chōbunsai, Gototei, or Ichiyūsai. To confer a posthumous Buddhist name (hōmyō) after death was a common practice but these names are not known for all artists.
Publishers
The publishers are presented in a chronological order based on dates (estimated or known) when each enterprise was started. The list of selected works consists of series otherwise stated.
Captions and Dating
The captions to the plates include artist name, series title, print title, publisher, medium, size, and date. All dates before January 1, 1873 (the day when Japan started to use the Gregorian calendar) refer to the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar. A date in the lunisolar calendar is not equivalent to the “same” date in the Gregorian calendar, e.g. the fifteenth day of the twelfth month 1864 is not equivalent to December 15, 1864 but in fact January 12, 1865, almost one month later. Dates since 1873 refer to today’s Gregorian calendar.
Table of approximate print sizes
| Width x Height | Width x Height | |
| ōban | 27 x 39 cm | 10.6 x 15.4 in. |
| hosoban | 15 x 33 cm | 5.9 x 13 in. |
| chūban | 19 x 26 cm | 7.5 x 10 in. |
| aiban | 23 x 33 cm | 9 x 13 in. |
| hashira-e | 12 x 73 cm | 4.7 x 28.7 in. |
| ōtanzaku | 39 x 17 cm | 15.4 x 6.7 in. |
| shikishiban | 19 x 22 cm | 7.5 x 8.7 in. |
artists
1892 Toshikage Memorial portrait of Yoshitoshi. ōban. Publisher: Akiyama Buemon. Private Collection.
This chapter contains the most prominent artists of Japanese wood-block prints between the late seventeenth and the early twentieth century. Artists like Utamaro or Kunisada were well-known during their day and considered masters of the form, and Sharaku, for example, is heavily sought by collectors today. Throughout the artists’ careers, they generally designed several hundred or even thousands of prints of different motifs and sizes for various publishers. Designs by Hiroshige, Hokusai, and others are still reproduced today using the same production techniques—but many fundamental details about the production process and the lives of the artists are now unknown.
Unsolved questions are how designs were conceived in general and how the actual printing process got started. Did an artist go to a publisher with a drawing asking to publish it, or did he send one of his disciples or someone else from his studio? Did a publisher or his clerk go to an artist with a suggestion for a print hoping that he would take on the task and create a unique design to his liking? We know that in some cases a third person, like a business owner, patron of an actor, poetry club, etc. financed designs but this seems to have been an exception rather than the general rule. Overall, the origin of a print seems to be actually comparable to that of a book today. An upcoming artist almost certainly went to a publisher himself, trying to convince him of the success of his design, much like today when a hitherto unpublished author tries to find a publisher for a book he has in mind. First, the young artist might have approached large publishing companies he already had contact with through his master and it is possible that his master recommended him or even turned
