VISUAL COMMUNICATION HISTORY BLOG

The opening of Japan in the 19th century after its isolationist Edo period caused an influx of foreign influence, including Western approaches to medicine. Woodblock prints from this era, often in the vibrant ukiyo-e style, captured this transition, with kabuki actors representing internal processes, and Buddhist deities battling cholera and measles. The University of California, San Francisco, has a particularly rich collection of over 400 o…

In legend, Bunbuku chagama is the name of a tea kettle owned by priest Shukaku who turned out to be an ancient raccoon dog or mujina, the supposed kettle still on view at Morin-ji temple which Shukaku served.

Not only is Ando Hiroshige a hugely important artist in his own right, but he is also to be reckoned with in terms of the influence that he and his fellow Japanese woodblock printers exerted over late 19th Century Western art & design: Hiroshige combines ideograms and imagery in his prints, often through a usage of boxes and rules as hierarchical aids. And it is this mastery over typographic hierarchies combined with complex imagery that wa…