Ukiyo

Have you ever contemplated that something may be so close yet so far? As such saying that goes by, “Good from far, far from good.” Truth be told, this is in fact in unity with what is Poetry and the Visual Arts. Therefore, the two are something that you can value, you can feel within yourself and understand more than life itself even if you don 't have it at arm 's length. Poetry could have its many controversies and its meanings between being deep, life touching, mind consuming and realistic.…

Word of Hua Tuo’s achievements in science and medicine would go on to become popular theme in East Asian literature and art, particularly in Japan. Kuniyoshi, a disciple of the Utagawa school, and one of the most renowned Ukiyo-e printmakers during the time of the Edo period illustrates the scene of Hua Tuo treating the shoulder wound of the famous Han general Guan Yu while conscious- a popular scene in in Luo Guanzhong’s 1522 novel, ‘The Romance of the Three Kingdoms’. The…

My Shogunate Investigation Throughout Japan’s history men were valued higher than woman, and men were the favoured gender. Both women and men had different traditions, roles and responsibilities in society. During the Shogunate period (1550 - 1850), Japanese women were mothers, entertainers and even samurai warriors and the social hierarchy played an important role on woman’s freedom and determined their future in society. Women had certain duties to fulfil, and served many men during their…

In this essay, I am going to talk about the Impressionist painting Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies of Claude Monet and the ukiyo-e print Under Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa of Katsushika Hokusai. Through making comparison of these two artworks, I will mainly describe the stylistic difference and study some differences between Western and Eastern art and society. First of all, I am going to talk about the background information of Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies. This artwork represents the…

all different mediums including printmaking. In 1890 Mary, along with many other artists of the time, attended an exhibit that she was greatly influenced from; The Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris exhibited several hundreds of Japanese prints of the Ukiyo-e School.16 Soon after this exhibit Mary set up shop and produced many versions of her work in the Japanese style, including The Omnibus and The Letter done in 1891. But out of everything Mary Cassatt painted she is widely remembered…

envelope; brings the viewer close to the room’s shallow space, where forced perspective is evident in the oddly skewed writing panel of the desk. These stylistic choices were influenced by traditional Japanese printmaking- the direct reference to Bijinga Ukiyo-e , the wooden prints of Kitagawa Utamara; yet, the woman’s garments and the other objects are all contemporary details of Cassatt’s…

Male homosexuality has a long tradition in Japan, dating back at least a thousand years with the establishment of homosexual art, poetries, and pieces of literature, such as The Tale of Genji and the Nanshōku ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love) by Saikaku. Regardless of the fact homosexuality practices were largely emphasized in early Japanese literature and promoted within society in the early periods, the notion of the homosexual seems to have declined in current Japanese culture. This…