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Apr 25, 2007 · During the Edo Period (1615-1868), a uniquely Japanese art from developed known as ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world." For the first time in Japan...
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- Minneapolis Institute of Art
Oct 21, 2024 · Ukiyo-e, which translates to "pictures of the floating world," is a genre of Japanese art that flourished during the Edo period (1603-1868). This artistic movement captured the essence of everyday life in Japan, focusing on the fleeting pleasures and ephemeral nature of the world.
Mar 18, 2022 · A style of woodblock prints that captured the glamour of the floating world, Ukiyo-e featured beautiful women, Kabuki actors, war heroes, landscape sceneries, erotic prints, and all things popular. One could even argue that Ukiyo-e, which literally means “pictures of the floating world”, was the Instagram of Edo Period Japan.
- The Floating World
- The Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter
During Japan’s Edo period (1615–1868) the phrase "the floating world" (ukiyo) evoked an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance—with overtones of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Implicit was a contrast to the humdrum of everyday obligation. The concept of the floating world began in the Japanese heartland, migrated eastward, and came to full flower in Edo (present-day Tokyo), where its main venues were popular Kabuki theaters and red-light districts. Each offered an array of rich sensory experiences to the fraction of the populace able to partake of them directly. The floating world also afforded vicarious pleasure to countless others throughout the Japanese islands, for whom it was experienced second-hand through theater, song, story, gossip, and pictures.
Under Japan’s last ruling military clan, the Tokugawa, the rapid growth of cities gave rise to a lively urban culture. Increasingly literate, wealthy, and sophisticated, the townspeople of Edo became heroes in high-spirited stories made up by their peers. Fashionable and often bawdy, these tales became the basis for a flood of advertisements for the floating world, in the form of inexpensive woodblock prints and guidebooks. Less numerous—but no less important—were paintings of the same subjects catering to wealthier people. Such paintings, which employed costly jewel-like pigments and intensive labor, could be bought ready-made or, more commonly, commissioned by a patron.
The sole licensed red-light district in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), the Yoshiwara was a walled and moated compound of about twenty acres. First established in 1617 near the city’s center, the Yoshiwara was relocated to the northeast forty years later. During the quarter’s heyday, from the late seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, countless men made the journey—a trip of some two miles—to reach the quarter’s fabled Main Gate (Omon). Within the Yoshiwara’s walls were teahouses, shops, and more than a hundred brothels arranged in a rectangular grid, divided from end to end by a main street, Nakanocho. The streets were lined with logo-like crests and names indicating the locations of brothels and other businesses.
Music, food, and drink were all on offer, but prostitutes were the star attractions of this bustling city within a city. By the end of the eighteenth century, more than 4,000 prostitutes worked in the Yoshiwara. Ranked by brothel owners according to skill, cost, and services, the most expensive were elite courtesans, whose professional names were passed down from a woman to her successor within the brothel. Rigorously trained in music, calligraphy, poetry, and other refined arts, these women were accessible only through strict protocols, requiring huge payments and tips at three preliminary meetings. Other prostitutes sat in latticed showrooms, on view to prospective clients. At the bottom of the hierarchy were moat-side prostitutes, whose services were quick and inexpensive. Many Yoshiwara prostitutes, including those promoted by brothel owners to the highest ranks, started life in impoverished homes in the countryside. Taken from their families, they were brought to the quarter, trained, and typically bound to brothels during the term of a ten-year contract.
Jan 27, 2021 · The history of ukiyo-e in Japanese art. “Ukiyo-e” 浮世絵 means “pictures of the floating world” and is one of the best-known forms of Japanese art. It flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries and much of the work depicts elements of the entertainment industry that was popular with the merchant class of the era.
Ukiyo (浮世, 'floating/fleeting/transient world') is the Japanese term used to describe the urban lifestyle and culture, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo period Japan (1600–1867). [2] Ukiyo culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the site of many brothels frequented by Japan ...
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Aug 14, 2015 · Ukiyo-e pictures of the floating world included as their subjects: beautiful women, both courtesans and geisha; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; history and legend; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and, an incredible volume of Shunga, literally “spring picture” (Erotica). Ukiyo-e did not originally burst forth as full color ...
