Ukiyo-e Printmakers to Discover After Hokusai

Tōshūsai Sharaku, 1794. The splayed fingers do nearly as much acting as the face. Sharaku isolates the performer from the stage, so one pose tells you how Ōtani Oniji III played the scheming servant Edobei.

Suzuki Harunobu, 1764–72. The lovers’ black and white robes give the print its bird names, but pay attention to the quieter whites too. Harunobu uses embossing as well as ink, so the snow and the paper’s raised pattern contribute to the hush of the scene.

Utagawa Hiroshige, 1833–34. The bodies lean, the hats dip, and the rain cuts across the slope. Look at the bamboo growing fainter through the downpour. Hiroshige makes the weather determine how the travelers move and how far the viewer can see.

Hiroshi Yoshida, 1926. Look at the sails, pink at the top and blue at the bottom, then see how their reflections break into ripples. Yoshida printed related views from the same blocks with different colors to suggest different times of day, so the same boats can seem to belong to another hour.

Okumura Masanobu, 1740. Start with the rows of lanterns and balcony rails. They recede toward the stage and take your eye into the theater with them. Masanobu helped popularize this approach to perspective in prints. The color on this impression was applied by hand.

Katsukawa Shunshō, mid-1700s. The actor’s wide stance and the angle of his staff do much of the work. Shunshō leaves enough space around the figure to show how a Kabuki performer holds the stage with his whole body.

Torii Kiyonaga, about 1784. Start with the tall figures near the water, then let your eye move along the bank across the two sheets. Kiyonaga uses the diptych to place people in a shared riverside outing, with room for both conversation and a view.

Kitagawa Utamaro, about 1793. Start with the fan and the three women’s clothes, then look at the slight turns of their heads. Utamaro gives each woman a distinct presence within a close grouping. The mica in this impression adds sheen to the background.

Utagawa Kunisada, 1811. Each sheet gives one Kabuki actor room to strike a pose. Start with the raised fan in the center, then follow the blooming plum tree across the sheets. Kunisada uses the shared setting to hold three distinct performances together as a single scene.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, about 1844. Follow the ribs and skull as they loom over the human figures and cross the seams. Kuniyoshi uses the three sheets as one continuous stage, making the skeleton’s size part of the story.

Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1879. Follow the pink lights from the train’s windows to their reflection below the tracks, then find the moon in the clouds. Kiyochika gives a new piece of city infrastructure the same attention he gives to the different ways things glow at night.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. In this 1892 impression, look down from the moon to the fox in the grass, then see how faintly it appears again in the water. Yoshitoshi gives the darkness several shades and lets the light pick out a little of the scene at a time, a quiet moment in One Hundred Aspects of the Moon.

Itō Shinsui, 1916. The artist sets a red robe and a patterned collar against a quiet ground. Look at how much presence he gets from a single profile. This beauty print began his collaboration with Watanabe Shōzaburō, the publisher who helped bring traditional woodblock methods into a new era.

Kawase Hasui, 1925. Watch how the single figure’s parasol picks up the color of the temple gate. Hasui puts broad areas of snow between those warm notes and the dark pine, so a scene with very few moving parts still draws your eye through it.