Category: JapaneseCulture

“Ukiyo-e” literally means “paintings of the floating world”. “Ukiyo-e is a Japanese art genre that was produced during the Edo period (1600-1868). During more than 200 years Japan was sealed to any foreign influence, but the life in the cities was completely centered around the pleasures of life and art. Ukiyo-e art was mass-produced using woodblock printing techniques. Depending on the popularity of the artist more or less units of the paintings were produced and afterwards the original prints were destroyed to make sure that the buyers had something unique.

Ukiyo-e engravings usually represent the typical scenes from that time: Kabuki theater, geisha portraits, samurais, sumo fighters, people traveling along the Tokaido road (from Kyoto to Edo/Tokyo), rice harvesting with mount Fuji on the horizon…

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai

Two of the most famous ukiyo-e artists are Hiroshige and Hokusai, who worked creating thousands of original ukiyo-e prints at the beginning of the 19th century. Moreover, thanks to how easy it was to make multiple copies, ukiyo-e paintings arrived to the western world and influenced painters of that time like Van Gogh or Claude Monet.

It is said that Hokusai created more than 30,000 original works of art, however he is mostly famous for his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, a series of paintings that portray the daily life of the people of the time with mount Fuji on the horizon. However, maybe he gained more popularity by his 1814 work Hokusai Manga, a series of caricatures and humorous paintings that are considered the origin of today’s Japanese manga, which is known all around the world.

Mount Fuji from Satta by Hiroshige

Apart from landscape scenes, theater depictions, portraits, etc. Some artists started to use the same technique to mass-produce engravings of explicit sex scenes. This kind of erotic art is known as shunga, and is considered to be one of the first pornographic productions in history. Nowadays erotic engraving are not very common, however erotic manga, known as hentai, shares certain similarities with traditional shunga.

Otani Oniji II by Sharaku.

If you come to Japan one of the best places to enjoy ukiyo-e art is the Ota Memorial Museum of Art located near Harajuku station.

Websites about Ukiyo-e:

• Ukiyo-e gallery
• Process of making an Ukiyo-e print
• How to recognize signatures of Ukiyo-e artists

Taro Okamoto is one of the most important Japanese artists of the 20th century. Most of his works can be enjoyed in Japanese museums and also in open spaces, like for example The Tower of the Sun, built in Osaka as the symbol of Expo ’70. The Myth of Tomorrow (Asu no shinwa – 明日の神話) is one of his most important works; it represents the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. It is a big painting, measuring 30 meters long, but for some strange reason it got lost for more than 25 years. Eventually someone found it in a warehouse and it has finally been exposed in Shibuya station since the end of 2008.

You can see it at Shibuya station in the hallway that goes from the JR lines area to the Inokashira lines area:

In the west a big-eared person is not considered to be attractive or lucky; but in Japan to have huge ears is a symbol of good luck and wealth. Legend has it that those with big ears, specially those with long earlobes will have lots of luck and wealth during their life.

Buddha (Siddhartha) was born with big ears. During his childhood and youth he lived surrounded by wealth within a noble family. Siddhartha wore expensive clothes and gold jewelry. One of the pieces of jewelry that he used the most were some heavy earrings made of gold that deformed his ears over the years making them even bigger. At some point Siddhartha renounced his world of wealth and materialism and left his big golden earrings behind.

According to the legend, his ears ended up like this:

Notice the elongated ears and how big the earring holes are.

Siddhartha, was able to reach enlightenment through mediation and “became Buddha”. Since then, big-eared people have been considered to be good at listening to the nature around them and be able to listen to the advice of the gods. I guess that being able to listen to gods makes it easier for them to make money and have luck in their life.

The primer minister of Japan during 2007 and 2008, Yasuo Fukuda, has pretty big ears. Were the big ears what made him become the prime minister of Japan? or maybe were they a factor that influenced the subconscious of the Japanese people to vote for him?

Yasuo Fukuda was the prime minister of Japan from September 2007 until September 2008.