Nishiki-e: or “brocade pictures” is essentially the name given to all multicoloured woodblock prints Ukiyo-e: “floating world pictures” are pictures inspired by the Edo/Tokyo pleasure…

Nishiki-e (brocade printing) in theory is a simple technique – you “just” paint an image; a carver creates a block to print each of the…

Just enjoyed the excitement of opening another box of prints from Japan – it’s always fun to see if the auction photos were anything like…

Sharaku Toshusai was one of Edo’s most enigmatic artists as very little is known about him except that he was commissioned between 1794 and 1795…

I always use an agent in Japan to buy for me because most sellers on Japanese auction sites don’t do international shipping and it’s very…

Since Easter I have had 3 deliveries from Japan but didn’t have the time or space to unpack them and photograph them all. So this…

Sam Leiter gave me a copy of a summary of the plot in Japanese (below) which I had summarised by u/Extension_Pipe4293 on Reddit:  A playboy…

This is just a quick analysis of my own Kunichika collection – listing all collaborations between publisher & carver, where they have both been mentioned…

Ukiyo-e artists were famous for having many different styles of signature throughout their careers and often these can help you pin-point a rough date range…

Fukuda Kumajirō [福田熊次郎] and latterly his son Fukuda Hatsujirō [福田初次郎] (1894-1939) were a huge force in Meiji yakusha-e publishing. Their double-fish logo giving their name…

The Meiji period brought in a lot of relaxations in censorship and this brought about a boom in the number of newspapers all vying to…

Umbrellas don’t sound very thrilling but I’m always looking out for elements of ukiyo-e that illustrate aspects of the Meiji period – the preoccupations of…

In the early days of ukiyo-e artists, experimented with different types of background to give their characters better prominence and increate their visual impact. One…

This modern Meiji play is a morality tale about the effects of money and greed on a family’s fortune, based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play of…

The sayaate scene is one of the most famous confrontations in kabuki theatre, in the play Ukiyozuka Hiyoku no Inazuma and in fact it is…

The Tokugawa shoguns had ruled for the entire Edo period (1603 to 1868) and in theory they ruled for the Emperor but in reality they…

Ougi Byoushi Ōoka Seidan (Famous Cases of Ōoka) is part of a family of plays about the life and times of Ōoka Tadasuke, an Edo…

This play features one of the most famous street-tough heroes (otokodate) of kabuki theatre – others include Sukeroku. They were heroic fighting commoners who would…

I don’t have the synopsis for this play but it seems to have been a very popular play based on the book “Meijin Choji: Joiner”…

I really love this print because it sums up the Meiji period very nicely – a traditional play “Kyō Ningyō (Kyōto Doll)” has been updated…