No one art form has done more to shape the world’s sense of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese aes­thet­ics than the wood­block print. But not so very long ago, in his­tor­i­cal terms, no such works had ever left Japan. That changed when, accord­ing to the Library of Con­gress, “Amer­i­can naval offi­cer Matthew Cal­braith Per­ry (1794–1858) led an expe­di­tion to Japan between 1852 and 1854 that was instru­men­tal in open­ing Japan to the West­ern world after more than 200 years of nation­al seclu­sion.” As trav­el­ers, mate­ri­als, and prod­ucts began flow­ing between Japan and the West, so did art.

This flow hap­pened, of course, by sea, and so Japan­ese artists work­ing in wood­block and oth­er forms soon found that the port city of Yoko­hama had become “an incu­ba­tor for a new cat­e­go­ry of images that strad­dled con­ven­tion and nov­el­ty.”

In their depic­tions of mod­ern Yoko­hama, “bewhiskered men and crino­line-clad women were shown strid­ing through the city, clam­ber­ing on and off ships, rid­ing hors­es, enjoy­ing local enter­tain­ments, and inter­act­ing with an end­less array of objects from gob­lets to loco­mo­tives.” This new genre in an estab­lished tra­di­tion took on the name “Yokohama‑e,” or “pic­tures of Yoko­hama.”

Hun­dreds of years ear­li­er, dur­ing the Toku­gawa Peri­od that began in the year 1600, that tra­di­tion had already pro­duced the now well-known genre of “Ukiyo‑e,” or “pic­tures of the float­ing world,” wood­block depic­tions of the plea­sure dis­tricts of Edo, now called Tokyo. “Var­i­ous forms of enter­tain­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly kabu­ki the­ater and the plea­sure quar­ters, lured monied patrons who were eager in turn to acquire the vivid images of cel­e­brat­ed actors and beau­ti­ful cour­te­sans.” Lat­er, “trav­el became a pop­u­lar form of leisure and the plea­sures of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, inter­est­ing land­marks, and the adven­tures encoun­tered en route also became favorite Ukiyo‑e themes.” Ukiyo‑e also looked to “Japan­ese myth, leg­end, lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, and dai­ly life” for sub­jects, and so its pro­lif­ic artists cap­tured the cul­ture near­ly whole.

You can come as close as pos­si­ble to expe­ri­enc­ing that cul­ture by view­ing, and down­load­ing, more than 2,500 Japan­ese wood­block prints and draw­ings at the Library of Con­gress’ online col­lec­tion “Fine Prints: Japan­ese, pre-1915.” It includes work from such pro­lif­ic Ukiyo‑e artists as Hoku­sai Kat­sushi­ka (whose Tea­house at Koishikawa the Morn­ing After a Snow­fall appears at the top of the post), Andō Hiroshige (Minakuchi below that), Iso­da Koryū­sai (Kisara­gi, third from the top), and Uta­gawa Yoshi­fu­ji (whose Amerika­jin Yūgyō, one of his depic­tions of Amer­i­cans, appears just above). As much as Japan has changed since the hey­day of the Yokohama‑e, much less the Ukiyo‑e, any vis­i­tor to the coun­try in the 21st cen­tu­ry will first notice not how much the sur­faces of Japan’s real urban and nat­ur­al land­scapes, domes­tic inte­ri­ors, and pub­lic scenes dif­fer from those in clas­si­cal wood­block prints, but how deeply they’ve remained the same.

Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

Behold the Mas­ter­piece by Japan’s Last Great Wood­block Artist: View Online Tsukio­ka Yoshitoshi’s One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon (1885)

The (F)Art of War: Bawdy Japan­ese Art Scroll Depicts Wrench­ing Changes in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Few things fas­ci­nat­ed me as a child more than Rus­sia. I wasn’t alone in this. Every­one expe­ri­enced it. And it wasn’t only the Sovi­et Union—though it played the bogey­man in Cold War films, loomed over his­to­ry text­books, and seemed to exist in a for­bid­den par­al­lel uni­verse in Reagan’s Amer­i­ca. But what came before it was equal­ly out­sized and trag­ic: the Romanovs, Rasputin, Cather­ine the Great, Peter the Great, Ivan the Ter­ri­ble.… Russia’s mod­ern his­to­ry came into focus through its novelists—the intri­cate social dis­tinc­tions and com­pli­cat­ed fam­i­ly dynam­ics, the palace intrigues, the gal­lows humor, dis­con­tent, and res­ig­na­tion of ordi­nary Rus­sians….

After 40 years of uneasy détente with the world’s oth­er super­pow­er, Amer­i­cans found the pieces of their view of Rus­sia falling into place almost imper­cep­ti­bly. But nothing—I repeat, nothing—prepared The West for Russ­ian mod­ernism. It drove the CIA to such dis­trac­tion that they secret­ly fun­neled mon­ey to jazz artists and Abstract Expres­sion­ists to fight a cul­ture war. It made no sense to us. “This is com­plete­ly ridicu­lous!” says Bri­an Cox above, express­ing a sen­ti­ment shared by many when they encounter Russ­ian For­mal­ism, or Supre­ma­tism, or Futur­ism, and oth­er avant-gardisms.

Cox, nar­rat­ing the “Quick­est His­to­ry of 20th Cen­tu­ry Art in Rus­sia,” does an excel­lent job of con­vey­ing the shock, excite­ment, and bewil­der­ment we feel when we encounter Male­vich and Mayakovsky, the star­tling folk Neo­clas­si­cism of Russ­ian Art Nouveau—where the film begins—the Con­cep­tu­al­ists of the Thaw, and the out­ra­geous per­for­mance artists of the post-Sovi­et era. None of this, to quote Tris­tan Tzara, is art made to “cajole the nice nice bourgeois”—with the iron­ic excep­tion of Social­ist Real­ism, which out­lawed the Russ­ian avant-garde and said “look, every­thing we have is so grand, abun­dant! We have every­thing aplen­ty!”

Social­ist Real­ism resem­bles noth­ing so much as Amer­i­can mag­a­zine adver­tis­ing of the Life mag­a­zine and Nor­man Rock­well eras, a reminder of one way the two bel­liger­ent empires came to increas­ing­ly resem­ble each oth­er over time. “Social­ist Real­ism,” says Cox, “is almost a car­i­ca­ture, only with incred­i­ble pathos.” It is “the first ten­den­cy to rule out crit­i­cism com­plete­ly.” It absorbed cri­tique and turned it into cel­e­bra­tion and denun­ci­a­tion, both of them noble acts of State. Where Amer­i­can didac­tic art sold hun­dreds of prod­ucts and a hand­ful of ide­o­log­i­cal pos­es, the Sovi­et vari­ety sold one thing: the Par­ty. This does not, how­ev­er, mean that Social­ist Real­ism is “bad”—not entire­ly. It is, instead, like so much mod­ern Russ­ian Art to non-Russ­ian eyes… uncan­ny.

The 25-minute “Quick­est His­to­ry of 20th Cen­tu­ry Art in Rus­sia” comes from a series of “Crash Cours­es” from Arza­mas Acad­e­my that includes “Ancient Rome in 20 min­utes” and “Ancient Greece in 18 min­utes.” All of them fea­ture the wry, mel­liflu­ous voice of Cox, and I high­ly rec­om­mend them all.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Down­load 144 Beau­ti­ful Books of Russ­ian Futur­ism: Mayakovsky, Male­vich, Khleb­nikov & More (1910–30)

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness