Ukiyo The Floating World Analysis

Ukiyo, the ''floating world'', was originally a Buddhist term referring to the transient nature of human life and experience. The message was, therefore not to cling to one’s desires, but instead to accept the flow of life without grasping.
In the hedonistic urban culture of early Modern Japan, the concept of a ‘’floating world” was given a new twist. The new spirit proclaimed that if pleasures are only momentary, than let’s enjoy them as much as possible when they appear, like the cherry blossoms that are all too soon lost to wind or rain.
Hokusai’s Great Wave, Hiroshige’s landscapes along the Tōkaidō road, Sharaku’s large-head actor portraits, Utamaro’s and Harunobu’s beauties from the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter are just a few popular examples

These products changed over time in accordance with the consumers’ interests and the technical development. Technical limits did not allow printing in color until the 1730s/40s and earlier prints were hand-colored principally with an orange lead oxide (tan-e) pigment to make them more appealing. With the introduction of color printing with two blocks (benizuri-e, lit. ‘pink-print pictures’) it was not long until multicolor printing was achieved, in 1765. The so-called ‘brocade prints’ (nishiki-e), were well received and sprang up like mushrooms. In the following decades, the printing process was further enhanced by developing special printing techniques such as the use of gold, mica and silver simulating metal pigments, graduation, embossing and lacquer-like

By the second half of the eighteenth century, multi-sheet compositions developed mostly diptychs and triptychs, showing a single image that evolved over all sheets. Occasionally, larger compositions appeared, consisting of five, six, eleven or twelve sheets. Every period was dominated by a specific format that appealed most to the majority of consumers. The narrow, hosoban, format was preferred for actor prints during the mid-eighteenth century. At the same time, prints of beautiful women were produced in the medium, chūban, format. At the end of the eighteenth century, the large, ôban format, became a principal size, mostly vertically for figures and horizontally for landscapes. Smaller formats existed as well in size deriving from the ôban format- one quarter, one half