San Antonio College Library

"Ukiyoye means pictures of the floating or passing world; the school of Japanese popular color prints known by this name flourished in thousands of prints by hundreds of artists over a relatively brief period c. 1760-1825. Since then the prints, originally considered vulgar and sold for pennies on the streets, have gained fame as the medium of Hokusai, Hiroshige and others, whose glimpses of Japanese life in landscape and theatrical scenes have influenced...

Japanese prints are probably the most popular form of art from the East that has become known to the West. These images of oriental life and thought have continued to delight Europe and America since they were first seen outside Japan in the mid-nineteenth century.

"A courtesan's day: hour by hour is the second in Hotei Publishing's Famous Japanese Prints Series (FJPS). In this volume three series are examined: Kitagawa Utamaro's The Twelve Hours of the 'Green Houses' (Seiro junitoki, c. 1794), Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's The Twenty-four Hours at Shinbashi and Yanagibashi (Shinryu nijuyoji, 1880-81) and Toyohara Kunichika's Scenes of the Twenty-four Hours, A Pictorial Trope (Mitate chuya nijuyoji no uchi, 1890-91)."...

Spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the examples of Japanese printed included in this book offer insights into the history of an art form and vision that is distinctively Japanese and was highly inspirational to later European painters.