The Art of Ukiyo-e

The other day, someone finally said they liked the appearance of my blog. That comes as a huge relief to me because I literally spent days--like 2 or 3--looking for a blog theme that I liked. I self-hosted my own WordPress blog for the purpose of being able to fully customize its appearance, but when time came for me to pick an actual theme, I was totally confused. I think I browsed more than 500 themes, and tried on more than 30, before I finally decided on the current one. After I made up my mind about it, I further customized it to suit my preferences.

This theme is called Japan-Style. I don't know how fitting a Japanese theme is to me, but I guess it's not so far out, considering Japan is the only foreign country I've lived in. At first, I didn't care about whatever was in this theme. The important thing was that it appealed to me. Upon closer inspection, however, I realized that this was no common Japanese theme with sakura or geisha. It showcased the ancient Japanese art of ukiyo-e (I confirmed this with Annie).

Ukiyo-e, translated as "pictures of the floating world", is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings popularized in Edo (modern day Tokyo) between the 17th and 20th centuries. Woodblock prints were produced when an artist made an original drawing on ink, which would then be traced by an assistant and glued face-down to a block of wood. The wood would then be chiseled to follow the print and later inked, then pressed on to paper, sequentially and often repeatedly, to achieve the desired painting. It was a genre that became popular with the "regular people" of society, because they could be mass-produced and were cheaper than original paintings. The subject of ukiyo-e was originally the city life, especially scenes from the entertainment district. Other popular subjects were sumo wrestlers, courtesans, popular actors, and then later on, landscapes.

One of the most recognizable ukiyo-e is Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura).

One of the original types of ukiyo-e, a single-color painting by Hishikawa Moronobu.

A colored print depicting the Eijuan Tea House by Suzuki Harunobu, the artist who developed the technique of multi-color printing.

If you can see, my blog's background depicts a couple of fish--koi, to be exact, also known as carp in English. Another meaning of koi in Japanese is "love or affection", thus the koi is a symbol of love and friendship in Japan. And that, my friends, makes this theme so much more meaningful.