Woodblock Techniques — Trinity of Artist, Engraver, and Printer

Ukiyo-e Is Not “The Art of a Single Artist”

Ukiyo-e is displayed in museums with signatures like “by Hokusai” or “by Utamaro”, so to modern eyes it looks like “a picture painted by one artist.” But actually it was made by a system of division of labor among four parties:

Role	Work
Hanmoto (publisher)	Publishing house / producer. In charge of planning, funding, and sales
Eshi (painter)	Draws the hanshita-e (preparatory drawing). Corresponds to a modern illustrator
Horishi (engraver)	Carves the woodblock. The technical core of the print
Surishi (printer)	Prints on paper. Carries color reproduction and mass production

Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, Utamaro’s bijin-ga — none of them were made by a single painter, but as the result of the publisher’s plan and collaboration with the engraver and printer. Close to modern film or game production as group work.

The Publisher (Hanmoto) — Planner as Publishing House

The publisher corresponds to a modern publishing house, record label, or game company. Famous publishers:

• Tsutaya Jūzaburō (1750-1797) — the greatest publisher in Edo, who launched Utamaro and Sharaku. The modern rental chain TSUTAYA takes its store name from the founder’s homage to this Jūzaburō
• Tsuruya Kiemon — publisher of the early nishiki-e (Harunobu, etc.)
• Nishimuraya Yohachi — publisher of Hokusai’s Fugaku Sanjūrokkei

The publisher’s work:

1. Planning — decide what to publish, when, by which painter
2. Funding — pay for the painter, engraver, printer, materials, and distribution network
3. Negotiation with the painter — subject, fee, deadline
4. Sales — Edo’s picture-book shops, distribution to the provinces
5. Risk management — dealing with the shogunate’s publication regulations (approval-seal system, etc.)

The Painter (Eshi) — Drawing the Preparatory Drawing

The painter’s work is drawing the hanshita-e (preparatory drawing) — the base drawing on paper for the actual print.

• Line drawing in ink on thin kōzo paper
• Colors are indicated on a separate paper as specification
• Once the preparatory drawing is passed to the engraver, it is pasted onto the woodblock and carved — that is, the original is destroyed
• Therefore, hardly any original drawings of ukiyo-e survive

This is a startling fact. Basically no “originals” by Hokusai or Utamaro remain. All the ukiyo-e we see are prints. The direct hand of a painter exists only as a small number of hand-painted ukiyo-e (nikuhitsu ukiyo-e) in a separate genre.

The Engraver (Horishi) — The Skilled Woodcarver

The engraver is the technical core of the print. The work:

1. Preparing the Woodblock (Hangi)

• Boards of yamazakura (mountain cherry) were used
• Fine-grained, hard, and slow to warp
• Standard practice uses both faces of the board (1 board = 2 faces)

2. Carving the Key Block (Omohan)

• The hanshita-e is pasted upside down onto the woodblock (to be reversed when printed)
• The area around the lines is carved out, leaving them as a relief (=lines stand high)
• Especially the face and hair are handled by the top-rank engraver (hori-oyakata). The delicate lines of the hair — kewari — are the highlight of the technique

3. Carving the Color Blocks (Irohan)

A separate woodblock is carved for each color. In nishiki-e (multicolor prints), sometimes 5 to 15 color blocks are needed.

4. Register Marks (Kentō)

To correctly stack multiple blocks, an identifying mark called a kentō is carved into the same position on each block. This allows the printer to layer colors accurately.

• Kagi-kentō — an L-shaped mark (lower right of the paper)
• Hikitsuke-kentō — a straight mark (bottom of the paper)

The Printer (Surishi) — Printing onto Paper

The printer is the artisan who puts pigment onto the block and prints on the washi.

1. Preparing the Paper

• Kōzo washi from Echizen, Mino, or Iyo
• Ji-zuri = preprocessing to make the paper easier to print on (dōsa-biki)

2. Colors (Pigments and Dyes)

• Mineral pigments — for example, red from bengara (iron oxide)
• Plant/animal dyes — for example, red from safflower, blue from indigo
• Imported pigments — after the late Edo, Bero-ai (Prussian Blue) is used in Hokusai’s Fugaku Sanjūrokkei
• Colors are dissolved in nikawa (animal glue) and put on the woodblock

3. Printing Process

1. Fix the woodblock on the printing stand
2. Apply color with a brush (hake)
3. Place the paper according to the kentō marks
4. Rub the back of the paper with a baren, transferring the color to the paper
5. Overprint in the order key block → light color → dark color

4. Special Techniques

• Bokashi-zuri — gradation expression
• Kirazuri (mica printing) — mica powder fixed to make the ground glossy (famous in Utamaro’s bijin-ga)
• Karazuri (blind printing) — pressing the woodblock without ink, making an embossed ridge on the paper. Used on the folds of white garments and so on
• Shōmen-zuri — maximizes the expressive power through the printer’s own skill

The Workflow of Division

The process for a single nishiki-e:

1. The publisher plans and commissions the painter
2. The painter draws the hanshita-e (several days to weeks)
3. Painter + engraver check the color specification
4. The engraver carves the key block and color blocks (several days per block, weeks in total)
5. The printer does a proof-print → color adjustment with painter and publisher
6. The printer does the main run (prints hundreds to thousands of copies)
7. The publisher wholesales to picture-book shops and sells

An initial print of a picture is increased to 200 → 500 → 1000 copies, and as the woodblock wears, later runs (atozuri) gradually decline in color. That first runs (shozuri) and later runs differ in price and evaluation is because of this wear.

Artisan Status and Fees

• The painter is of townsman status. Famous painters (Utamaro, Hokusai) had a relatively high status as literati.
• The engraver and printer are of artisan status. Hired by the publisher, or on commission.
• Fees were clearly set:
  • Preparatory drawing: several silver monme to several tens of monme per sheet
  • Carving: several tens of silver monme per block
  • Printing: about 200 sheets per day

That Utamaro and Hokusai lived poor all their lives even at their level was because per-sheet fees were thin and the publisher took most of the profit. The publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō made a fortune from Utamaro’s pictures, but Utamaro himself had no financial comfort even in his later years.

Government Control — The Approval-Seal System

The Edo shogunate controlled published works. In ukiyo-e too:

• Aratame-in (approval seal) — the seal of having been censored. Always stamped on prints
• Prohibitions — criticism of the shogunate, names of daimyō, spring pictures (tolerated in the late Edo but officially forbidden)
• The reform of 1842 (Tenpō 13) — banning explicit written names of courtesans and actors (use of aliases required)
• 1876 (Meiji 9) — publication ordinances shift to modern censorship

Within these regulations, painters and publishers developed evasion techniques (mitate, anonymity, cant). For example, “Toyokuni draws as an actor painter, Kuniyoshi drew it as a scribble” was a censorship-evading expression.

100 Years of Technique — Sumizuri → Benizuri → Nishiki-e

The technique of ukiyo-e multiplied over 100 years toward multicolor:

• c. 1670-1730: Sumizuri-e — one black color
• c. 1710-1720: Tan-e — vermilion, green, and yellow painted by hand
• c. 1720-1740: Beni-e — hand-coloring based on beni (safflower red)
• c. 1740-1760: Benizuri-e — early multicolor printing in 2-3 colors
• 1765: Nishiki-e — full multicolor printing by Suzuki Harunobu

The birth of the nishiki-e was not sudden, but the sum of 100 years of accumulated technique.

From This Article to the Next

The technical base was in place, and the division of labor among publisher, painter, engraver, and printer was working. The remaining innovation was the realization of full multicolor printing = nishiki-e. In 1765, the Edo painter Suzuki Harunobu, using the occasion of the daishō-reki kōkankai (calendar-picture exchange gathering) of amateur calendar enthusiasts, completed multicolor printing in 8 or more colors. The next article traces this event that truly gave birth to ukiyo-e.