Crystal Vogel, age 16, of Monroe, La., for her question:
HOW ARE JAPANESE PRINTS MADE?
Beautiful Japanese prints have long been famous. These are pictures printed from carved wooden blocks. Some of the prints are made with only one color and some with many colors.
A Japanese wood engraver cuts his design along the grain, on the plank side of a hardwood block. He then covers the raised part of the block with ink and presses a sheet of paper down onto it by rubbing it with a bamboo wrapped pad.
Each color may require a separate block. Some colors are formed by overprinting one color on top of another.
The paper used for Japanese prints is made of the bark fiber of the mulberry tree. It is thin, tough and porous. It is "sized," or filled with powder, so colors will not run on it.
The Japanese method of making prints is quite different from the methods used in Western countries. A Western wood engraver usually uses the cross grain end of the piece of wood, rather than the plank side. He makes prints from the block by pressing it face down onto a piece of paper or cloth, rather than by putting a sheet of paper on the surface and rubbing it.
Japanese prints are especially known for the simple lines and delicate coloring. In the years between 1740 and 1890, the Japanese created more color print designs than any other people.
In the late 1800s Japanese prints became popular in Europe and America. Their bold decorative quality had a deep effect on many Western artists.
Printed pictures of Buddhist gods were made in Japan as early as the 1100s and 1200s. If we consider printed writing as a form of print, the oldest surviving example in the world is a series of religious Japanese charms made about A.D. 770.
Color prints, for which the Japanese are so famous, developed much later. The first single sheets in black and white were made in the 1600s, at a time when the government decided it would be a good idea to spread education to a wide range of young people.
Just as the Japanese prints were becoming popular, kabuki plays were also being produced. Artists then started to draw heroes of the stage and women famous for their beauty, as well as characters from history and legend.
Portraits of actors in well known roles came to be known as "ukiyo e," often translated as "pictures of the Floating World." The artists made use of lines to indicate depth and volume. They used the supple brush strokes common in the art of many Far Eastern countries.
Each class of feudal society in Japan tended to have its own art style. The artisans, craftsmen and merchants, who made up the lowest social class, favored the ukiyo a style.
Almost all of the artists who made the Japanese print famous lived in the military capital of Edo, which is now Tokyo, and not at the Emperor's capital of Kyoto. Publishers paid the artists to make the designs. Then they hired specialists to cut the wood blocks and employed printers to apply the colors. Of all those involved, the artists received the smallest payment.