Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world”.  It is attributed to a style of painting and printing in Japan that was done during the Edo period (1615-1868).  Typical subject matter for such images were the present moment, the latest fashions and urban culture. Ukiyo-e was created by and for the townsman class (called machi eshi) of the city of Edo (modern Tokyo), the seat of the military government established by the Tokugawa Shogunate. 

Artists were looking to develop an artistic medium that made it possible to offer paintings in large quantities and at a moderate price.  The first medium to do this was shikomi-e “ready-made pictures”.   Shikomi-e were hand painted monochrome images of simple compositions and popular pictorial themes that were easily accessible, such as depictions of beautiful women.  These would be sold at affordable prices in Kyoto shops, and displayed in their windows.  The artists of these were machi eshi, but most paintings were unsigned.   Since each image was hand painted, this limited the number of paintings that could be produced at one time.  Woodblock printing solved this problem.

Woodblock printing was not started in the Edo period.  The earliest known woodblock print dates to 770 A.D., and the tradition continued on a small scale until the 17^th century.  In this period it was first used for the production of popular art and literature.  In the Kan’ei era (1624-44) popular novels called tanroku-bon with literary themes originating from orally transmitted stories known by the common people since the Middle Ages, became all the rage in Kyoto.  Along with the text were outlines of illustrations, both text and image being produced by woodblock printing.  The illustrations would then be colored by hand.  They were crude and unpolished, but still showed a sense of style imitating the gracefully elegant designs of the traditional yamato-e, the refined style of the nobility.

During this same period emerged Kanaz­oshi, a literary genre that vividly portrayed the hedonistic lifestyle of Edo urban culture.  Illustrations depicting these themes were printed with the text.  These illustrated texts, e-iribon (“books with inserted pictures”), for the common man, united content and medium for the first time.  E-iribon developed and matured in the Kamigata region, which was subject to Kyoto and the seat of the imperial court.  It was brought to the city of Edo, the shogun’s capital, after the great fire in 1657.  This cataclysmic event, which destroyed most of the city including the Edo castle, allowed for new development and made the city into a modern center for urban culture, including the desire for e-iribon, the illustrated book.

During the Manji (1658-61) and Kanbun (1661-73) eras, e-iribon became more popular and varied.  They now included tales of heroes, erotic love stories and educational and critical commentary on courtesans and Kabuki actors.

The collection of Japanese woodblock prints at the Wriston Art Galleries at Lawrence University, includes a wide range of ukiyo-e artist works dating from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries.  Most are from the 19^th century, and display a variety of different subjects.

Some of the typical subject matter for ukiyo-e artists are:

-Bijin-ga (images of beauties)
These might be of actual contemporary and historic women or of an idealized type of beauty specific to a time and region. Courtesans in particular were usually depicted in the latest and most elaborate fashions of the day. After an increasing number of censorship laws were passed to limit the production of prints of famous courtesans, thought to corrupt the morals of the citizens of Japan, many artists turned to domestic images of mothers and daughters or women with servants and generalized pictures of the latest fashions in order to satisfy the demand for bijin-ga and skirt the laws.

-Landscapes
Previous to the 17^th century landscapes were the hallmark of high art in Japan, but at this time they were no longer confined to the upper strata of society. Instead, it was slowly smuggled into the realm of popular art by common artisans eager to meet the general populace’s demand for an affordable and decorative art as well as used for travel advertisements and informational publications. 

-Yakusha-e (Kabuki actors)
Ukiyo-e artists were often commissioned to execute portraits of kabuki actors in some of their most famous and popular roles. These portraits served as advertisements of an upcoming performance and as souvenirs for fans of kabuki, who would often loudly shout and cheer when one of their favorite actors struck a particularly dramatic and expressive pose (mie). Like many professions in Japan, acting was often a family tradition, thus like some ukiyo-e artists, actors would take the name of their predecessor and simply add a number to mark their position in the line of succession.

Although these are typical, the ukiyo-e artists did not limit their visual vocabulary and experimented with different subjects, styles and even sizes.

Standard print sizes:

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