Ukiyo-e explained: Hiroshige vs Hokusai
Ukiyo-e means 'pictures of the floating world'. For two centuries it was Japan's popular art, and its two great landscape artists could hardly be more different.
How a woodblock print was made
An ukiyo-e print was a team effort. A designer drew the image, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one for each colour, and a printer brushed ink on each block and pressed paper onto it by hand, lining up the colours by eye. A publisher paid for it all and sold the prints cheaply to the public. That is why they were collected by ordinary people in Edo, today's Tokyo, and why so many survive.
Hokusai: drama and design
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) made the most famous Japanese image of all, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. His landscapes are bold and graphic: huge foreground shapes, strong diagonals, nature as a force.
Hiroshige: weather and mood
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was younger and quieter. His series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo are about atmosphere: rain, snow, mist, dusk, the seasons. Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge, with its fine lines of rain, is so admired that Van Gogh copied it.
Which suits your home?
Choose Hokusai for a single graphic statement, in a hallway or a room that can take drama. Choose Hiroshige where you want calm: a bedroom, a reading corner, a japandi living room. Both look best framed simply, with a white mount.