The Met Puts 650+ Japanese Illustrated Books Online: Marvel at Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji and More

There are cer­tain Japan­ese wood­block prints many of us can pic­ture in our minds: Hoku­sai Kat­sushika’s The Great Wave off Kana­gawa, Uta­gawa Hiroshige’s Sud­den Show­er over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake, Kita­gawa Uta­maro’s Three Beau­ties of the Present Day. Even when we find vast archives of such works, known as ukiyo‑e or “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” we tend to appre­ci­ate the works them­selves one piece at a time; we imag­ine them on walls, not in books. But it was in books that much of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters first appeared in the first place. Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro, as the three are usu­al­ly called, “are best known today for their wood­block prints, but also excelled at illus­tra­tions for deluxe poet­ry antholo­gies and pop­u­lar lit­er­a­ture.”

So writes John Car­pen­ter, Cura­tor of the Depart­ment of Asian Art at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, describ­ing the “fell swoop” in which the Met acquired “a superb col­lec­tion of Japan­ese books to com­ple­ment its excel­lent hold­ings in paint­ings and prints of the Edo peri­od (1615–1868).” Once the per­son­al col­lec­tion of Arthur and Char­lotte Ver­sh­bow, these books came into the muse­um’s pos­ses­sion in 2013, and have now come avail­able to browse on and even down­load from its web site.

Car­pen­ter describes the col­lec­tion as “par­tic­u­lar­ly strong in works by ukiyo‑e artists, but includes rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of all the var­i­ous schools of Japan­ese art. Includ­ed in the col­lec­tion of some 250 titles — more than 400 vol­umes — are numer­ous mas­ter­pieces of wood­block print­ing, many of which are near­ly impos­si­ble to find in such fine con­di­tion today.”

You’ll find in the Met’s online col­lec­tion not just the vol­umes from the Ver­sh­bow col­lec­tion, but “over 650 eigh­teenth- and nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese illus­trat­ed books” in total. Selec­tions include edi­tions of Uta­maro’s Gifts of the Ebb Tide (The Shell Book), Hiroshige’s Pic­ture Book of the Sou­venirs of Edo (the name of Tokyo in his day), and Hoku­sai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji. You can also find books full of the work of ukiyo‑e mas­ters of whom you may not have heard, such as Kat­sukawa Shun­shō’s Mir­ror of Yoshi­wara Beau­ties, Kitao Masanobu’s A New Record Com­par­ing the Hand­writ­ing of the Cour­te­sans of the Yoshi­wara, and Uta­gawa Kunisada’s That Pur­ple Image in Mag­ic Lantern Shows. Though few of us today know Kunisada’s name, in the ear­ly to mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry his pop­u­lar rep­u­ta­tion far exceed­ed those of Hoku­sai, Hiroshige, and Uta­maro — not least because of how many could enjoy his work in books like these. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

1,000+ His­toric Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Dig­i­tized & Put Online by the Smith­son­ian: From the Edo & Meji Eras (1600–1912)

Get Free Draw­ing Lessons from Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai, Who Famous­ly Paint­ed The Great Wave of Kana­gawa: Read His How-To Book, Quick Lessons in Sim­pli­fied Draw­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.