Bonsai Trees in Japanese Prints – Small is Beautiful By toshidama I suppose that if you were to ask most people about traditional Japanese culture, they would talk about geishas and samurai, sushi, kimonos and bonsai trees. It’s likely though that few people would know much about the bonsai tree and probably would not have seen one. [...]
Otokodate – Black Sheep of the Floating World By toshidama It’s easy to use a phrase over and over without ever really thinking about it or explaining it in any great detail. The word Otokodate is one such instance and I am aware that we use it at the gallery without clearly defining it. Otokodate [...]
There – Not There – Woodblock Prints and the Work of Paul Morrison By toshidama In ukiyo-e, as in all prints produced from blocks, there is little margin for hesitation – no grey area for the artist to prevaricate. In relief printing at its most basic, there is only the presence of a mark (black or [...]
The Pachyderm in the Room – Kuniyoshi’s Elephant By toshidama The elephant has long presented artists of all genres with a problem. The elephant is exotic, clearly enormous and spectacular but in captivity it lacks the dynamism, the heroism that its reputation suggests. Very few artists have successfully represented the elephant and because of the [...]
The Japanese Zodiac – Animals in Ukiyo-e by toshidama The subject of the Japanese (Chinese) zodiac would take many hundreds of pages accurately to describe. It is a complex system of Buddhist symbolism, planetary observation and Imperial obeisance. The Japanese Zodiac and calendar were introduced from China in the sixth century. The Imperial court invited [...]
Japanese Prints In Context – Kunisada Warriors By toshidama It’s a fact of history that it is not always the person that first conceived something that is remembered so much as the person who made it famous. In ukiyo-e, this is particularly true of one of the nineteenth century’s most lasting and noticeable genres – the [...]
Boys and Girls… Gender, Kabuki and Japanese Prints By toshidama Japanese prints can be confusing territory for those seeking certainty. Artists of the ukiyo-e revelled in “look and compare” pictures or mitate-e as it is called. Borrowing from the traditions of poetry, mitate-e pictures play ironically with the knowingness of the audience, substituting contemporary actors for [...]
Techniques in Japanese Prints IV – Bokashi Toshidama Gallery By toshidama Bokashi (shading) Probably the most common advanced technique in woodblock prints is termed bokashi which means shading or transition. It is so universal in some artists’ work that it seems barely noticeable but it nevertheless provides extraordinary variety and depth to a print as [...]
Imaginary Journeys – Hiroshige’s Tokaido Road By toshidama There are two recent publications celebrating Hiroshige’s views of Japan: Nancy Gaffield’s poem cycle Tokaido Road (C B Editions £7.99) and Taschen’s Hiroshige – 100 Famous Views of Edo. The former is an imaginary journey along the famous Tokaido highway; one poem for each of the 53 stations, [...]
Japanese Tattoos – The Persistent Hero By toshidama Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was (perhaps) a great warrior, one of a great band of men – legendary, brave, skillful and outlawed – who saved China from invasion, who righted wrongs and stood up for the poor and oppressed. This great warrior [...]
The Osaka School Artists Toshidama Gallery By toshidama There is an enigma about these instantly recognisable woodblock prints that we term the Osaka School. Two or three things jump out of these prints which immediately differentiate them from their near neighbours in Edo. Firstly, their size – nearly all Osaka prints are printed onto [...]
Giant Spiders – Obscure Meanings in Japanese Prints Part I By Alex Faulkner Toshidama Gallery Arachnophobes – which I’m afraid includes me! – should look away now. Ukiyo-e is littered with the corpses and the dripping fangs of over-sized and fantastical spiders. Something one notices immediately is how similar they all look and [...]
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