A Brief Look at Japanese Art and Manga Origins

When we consider Japanese art the most thought of example would be Manga (漫 画). Manga is a Japanese word that accounts for comics and print cartoons. The rest of the world think of Manga more connected with a particular style of racy and anglular drawings. Japanese Manga and Anime now commands a $5 billion global market.
The art style has been developed from a number of different influences, both Japanese and foriegn. The word manga in literal translation means "random pictures". The word was first used in the late 18th century along with publication of works by a number of artists and including:
Suzuki Kankei's "Mankaku zuihitsu" (1771)
Santo Kyoden's "Shiji no yukikai" (1798)
Another wave of works arrived in the early 19th century such as Aikawa Minwa's "Manga hyakujo" (1884) and more importantly "Hokusai manga". Hokusai was a famous "ukiyo-e" artist.
Ukiyo-e translates as "floating world" (more commonly translated into "pictures of the floating world") and is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and 20th century. They mostly feature lanscapes, theatre and sex. The art movement rose up amoung the urban centers of Edo (Tokyo), Osaka and Kyoto. Early ukiyo-e originated in popularity from the single color works of Hishikawa Moronobu in the 1670's but the style of ukiyo-e did NOT originate with him. Hishikawa was the son of a well respected dyer and silver/gold thread embroider. He studied in both the Tosa and Kano schools of art, both highly repsected institutions. You can see some of the teachings of Kano and Tosa in the works he produces. The bold outlines of Kano can be spotted in his landscape work and his Tosa background emerges through his human subject orientated work, which about a quatre of was erotic art (also called "Shunga").<br>Ukiyo-e art at first was made using India inks and then shortly after some prints were manually coloured with a brush. In the 18th century Suzuki Harunobu developed techniques for polychromal painting.
He used this technique to produce "nishiki-e", which refers to Japanese multi-coloured woodblock printing. Nishiki-e is made by carving seperate woodblocks for each and every colour and using them in a stepwise fashion. Although Suzuki was credit with the development of the technique used, it was an engraver by the name of Kinroku who created the technical innocations that allowed so many blocks of seperate colours to fit perfectly onto the page where they ought to in order to create single complete images.
Ukiyo-e was very popular partly due to how affordable they were. This was down to the fact they could be mass-produced. Men who were not wealthy enough to afford original paintings would oftens buy these works instead.
Originally Ukiyo-e art was orientated around city life. Featureing mostly courtesans, sumo wrestlers and other popular activities. later on landscapes became also very popular. The art created very rarely featured politics or people of stature above the lowest levels of society. Although officially sex was not a respected subject it continually emerged in ukiyo-e prints, it would even occsionally incure the wrath of the law on the publisher and artists who produced it.
The manga that we now enjoy really only emerged in the 20th and 21th centuries after "Dr. Osamu Tezuka" (1928 - 1989). He is generally regarded as the fore-father of Japanese Manga and Anime. His most famous creations were "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the White Lion". Osamu developed a lot of the modern techniques and styles used in Manga. Interestingly the large eyes that Manga is so commonly connected with originated from Osamu, more interestingly he developed the idea and style from that of the western cartoon "Betty Boop". In fact Osamu was a massive fan of the Disney animations and all his work has been in some form or another been inspired by Walt Disney. It was also with Osamu that much of the graphic violence of modern Manga has originated. Although by far not all his works were violent, as with Astro Boy, much of his work featured gritty story lines and a lot of mature content.

This is a brief write up of the first part of some notes taken within a lecture on Japanese. I mostly gained my insight into the art through wikipedia.org