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the floating world

Posted on January 27, 2007 @ 6:43 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, india, japan, travel, ukiyo-e, wordpress

ukiyo-e aynaku travel illustration

 

From1688 up to1868 the chonin, urban merchants and townspeople became the affluent bourgeoisie and the standard-bearer of a new Japanese popular culture. With plenty of money, they lived a life of luxury and created a lifestyle of their own, centred greatly on the pursuit of pleasures. Chonin gave rise to new forms of theatre, poetry and visual arts, such as woodblock printing or ukiyo.e. Prints were produced -entirely by hand- by the artist, the wood engraver and the printer. Off course my short report gives only a hint of the extraordinary care and the most careful registering required by the printer in order to produce the flawless, multicoloured pictures envisioned by the artist. The attitude of living just for the moment came to life especially in every city’s pleasure quarter or “Floating World”, whose streets where lined with theatres, restaurants, public baths and houses of assignation. Life in red-light districts was brimming with excitement and artists pictured it. As matter of fact erotic prints constituted a considerable portion of the repertoire of most woodblock artist…
The funny thing is that I learned everything about, not during my staying in vibrant Tokyo, but a few months later when I found myself in a remote Indian Himalayan village, among perfumed cedar forests and moody sacred cows. In a local bookstore I bought a volume of the magazine Art of Asia entirely devoted to Japanese art and spent some rather solitary nights reading about the marvellous Floating World…who knows? I guess that the old zen adage: “both deluded beings and Buddhas gaze at the same moon” is the proper ending of this story.

Illustration Friday’s topic is: red

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 and is filed under blog, india, japan, travel, ukiyo-e, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 people have left comments

I wish you had travelled down here to Venezuela, so that I could read one of your amazing stories about my country, Aynaku :)

Your illo is magical, I love it!

Pati @-;– wrote on January 27, 2007 - 6:56 pm CET

La tua illustrazione trasmette tanta emozione, mistero e anche un discreto odore di cedro…lo sento in aria…

Nicole wrote on January 27, 2007 - 8:16 pm CET

WOW! very cool! I love this! The illo is so beautiful and mysterious! Who wouldn’t want to know about the floating world and Ilove the zen addage!!! Super Terrific!

valgalart wrote on January 27, 2007 - 9:14 pm CET

awesome illo aynaku….very magical.

Michelle Lana wrote on January 28, 2007 - 1:06 am CET

yep that world clashed with english and american
purtainism and hasn’t been the same since. to progress and high morals and long noses from which to look down from nice illo and comentary as usual

michael dailey wrote on January 29, 2007 - 1:28 am CET

The red moon is hypnotic and you’ve done a wonderful job with the shadows and textures on the trees. Lovely in every way!

amy Zaleski wrote on January 29, 2007 - 5:23 pm CET

You’ve escaped me over the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I’m so swamped it’s hard to keep up with IF. It’s all I can do to get my episode out. Beautiful design, as always, Massimo.

Bron Smith wrote on January 30, 2007 - 8:24 am CET

Wow. It’s peaceful and yet has a dynamic quality. Nice colors too. Your name signature mark is a great solution. (I haven’t come up with my own.)

P.L. Frederick wrote on January 30, 2007 - 2:21 pm CET

Wonderful - I love the red moon as well. The way you bring the stories to life with your stunning illustrations. I love how your name signature in this one looks like the woodblock prints.
P.S. I had tried to leave a comment a few times in the past week. The comment page just would open up to a blank page. Who knows?! Glad I was finally able to get in!

Tiffini Elektra X wrote on February 3, 2007 - 9:16 pm CET

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