Japanese Works : Zōho ukiyoe ruikō

Ōta Nanpo 大田南畝 (1749-1823)

Japanese Works

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Ukiyo ruikō 浮世絵類考 (a printed book) is a collection of biographies of Ukiyoe artists. Ukiyoe 浮世絵 are mainly woodblock prints, although the genre sometimes includes paintings. The Ukiyoe art-form flourished between the 17th and the 19th centuries in Japan. Many editions of Ukiyoe ruikō were published. It was the important scholar of art, Saitō Gesshin 斎藤月岑 (1804-1878), who prepared this enlarged and revised edition of Ukiyo ruikō (Zōho ukiyoe ruikō). It is Saitō Gesshin’s own manuscript (in book form) that we possess here at Cambridge, the Zōho ukiyoe ruikō 増補浮世絵類考. The most important part of this edition is probably the description of the famous and mysterious artist, Sharaku 写楽.</p>