Editing Ukiyo-e (section)

==Criticism and historiography==

Contemporary records of ukiyo-e artists are rare. The most significant is the {{Transliteration|ja|[[Ukiyo-e Ruikō]]}} (''"Various Thoughts on ukiyo-e"''), a collection of commentaries and artist biographies. [[Ōta Nanpo]] compiled the first, no-longer-extant version around 1790. The work did not see print during the Edo era, but circulated in hand-copied editions that were subject to numerous additions and alterations;{{sfn|Takeuchi|2004|pp=118, 120}} over 120 variants of the {{Transliteration|ja|Ukiyo-e Ruikō}} are known.{{sfn|Tanaka|1999|p=190}}

Before World War II, the predominant view of ukiyo-e stressed the centrality of prints; this viewpoint ascribes ukiyo-e's founding to Moronobu. Following the war, thinking turned to the importance of ukiyo-e painting and making direct connections with 17th century {{Transliteration|ja|Yamato-e}} paintings; this viewpoint sees Matabei as the genre's originator, and is especially favoured in Japan. This view had become widespread among Japanese researchers by the 1930s, but the militaristic government of the time suppressed it, wanting to emphasize a division between the {{Transliteration|ja|Yamato-e}} scroll paintings associated with the court, and the prints associated with the sometimes anti-authoritarian merchant class.{{sfn|Kita|2011|pp=149, 154–155}}

[[File:Fenollosa.jpg|thumb|upright|American scholar of Japanese art [[Ernest Fenollosa]] was the first to complete a comprehensive critical history of ukiyo-e.]]

The earliest comprehensive historical and critical works on ukiyo-e came from the West. [[Ernest Fenollosa]] was Professor of Philosophy at the [[University of Tokyo|Imperial University]] in Tokyo from 1878, and was Commissioner of Fine Arts to the Japanese government from 1886. His ''Masters of {{not a typo|Ukioye}}'' of 1896 was the first comprehensive overview and set the stage for most later works with an approach to the history in terms of epochs: beginning with Matabei in a primitive age, it evolved towards a late-18th century golden age that began to decline with the advent of Utamaro, and had a brief revival with Hokusai and Hiroshige's landscapes in the 1830s.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=3–5}} [[Laurence Binyon]], the Keeper of Oriental Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, wrote an account in ''Painting in the Far East'' in 1908 that was similar to Fenollosa's, but placed Utamaro and Sharaku amongst the masters. [[Arthur Davison Ficke]] built on the works of Fenollosa and Binyon with a more comprehensive ''Chats on Japanese Prints'' in 1915.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=8–10}} [[James&nbsp;A. Michener]]'s ''The Floating World'' in 1954 broadly followed the chronologies of the earlier works, while dropping classifications into periods and recognizing the earlier artists not as primitives but as accomplished masters emerging from earlier painting traditions.{{sfn|Bell|2004|p=12}} For Michener and his sometime collaborator [[Richard Douglas Lane|Richard Lane]], ukiyo-e began with Moronobu rather than Matabei.{{sfn|Bell|2004|p=20}} Lane's ''Masters of the Japanese Print'' of 1962 maintained the approach of period divisions while placing ukiyo-e firmly within the genealogy of Japanese art. The book acknowledges artists such as Yoshitoshi and Kiyochika as late masters.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=13–14}}

{{Interlanguage link|Seiichirō Takahashi|ja|3=高橋誠一郎}}'s ''Traditional Woodblock Prints of Japan'' of 1964 placed ukiyo-e artists in three periods: the first was a primitive period that included Harunobu, followed by a golden age of Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and Sharaku, and then a closing period of decline following the declaration beginning in the 1790s of strict [[sumptuary law]]s that dictated what could be depicted in artworks. The book nevertheless recognizes a larger number of masters from throughout this last period than earlier works had,{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=14–15}} and viewed ukiyo-e painting as a revival of {{Transliteration|ja|Yamato-e}} painting.{{sfn|Kita|2011|p=155}} {{Interlanguage link|Tadashi Kobayashi|ja|3=小林忠}} further refined Takahashi's analysis by identifying the decline as coinciding with the desperate attempts of the shogunate to hold on to power through the passing of draconian laws as its hold on the country continued to break down, culminating in the Meiji Restoration in 1868.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=15–16}}

Ukiyo-e scholarship has tended to focus on the cataloguing of artists, an approach that lacks the rigour and originality that has come to be applied to art analysis in other areas. Such catalogues are numerous, but tend overwhelmingly to concentrate on a group of recognized geniuses. Little original research has been added to the early, foundational evaluations of ukiyo-e and its artists, especially with regard to relatively minor artists.{{sfn|Hockley|2003|pp=13–14}} While the commercial nature of ukiyo-e has always been acknowledged, evaluation of artists and their works has rested on the aesthetic preferences of connoisseurs and paid little heed to contemporary commercial success.{{sfn|Hockley|2003|pp=5–6}}

Standards for inclusion in the ukiyo-e canon rapidly evolved in the early literature. Utamaro was particularly contentious, seen by Fenollosa and others as a degenerate symbol of ukiyo-e's decline; Utamaro has since gained general acceptance as one of the form's greatest masters. Artists of the 19th century such as Yoshitoshi were ignored or marginalized, attracting scholarly attention only towards the end of the 20th century.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=17–18}} Works on late-era Utagawa artists such as Kunisada and Kuniyoshi have revived some of the contemporary esteem these artists enjoyed. Many late works examine the social or other conditions behind the art, and are unconcerned with valuations that would place it in a period of decline.{{sfn|Bell|2004|pp=19–20}}

Novelist [[Jun'ichirō Tanizaki]] was critical of the superior attitude of Westerners who claimed a higher aestheticism in purporting to have discovered ukiyo-e. He maintained that ukiyo-e was merely the easiest form of Japanese art to understand from the perspective of Westerners' values, and that Japanese of all social strata enjoyed ukiyo-e, but that Confucian morals of the time kept them from freely discussing it, social mores that were violated by the West's flaunting of the discovery.{{sfn|Yoshimoto|2003|p=65–66}}

[[File:Tagosaku to Mokube no Tokyo Kenbutsu.jpg|thumb|left|alt=Black-and-white comic strip in Japanese|[[Manga]] histories often find an ancestor in the ''[[Hokusai Manga]]''.{{pb}}[[Rakuten Kitazawa]], {{Transliteration|ja|Tagosaku to Mokube no Tōkyō Kenbutsu}},{{efn|{{nihongo3|''Tagosaku and Mokube Sightseeing in Tokyo''|田吾作と杢兵衛の東京見物|Tagosaku to Mokube no Tokyo Kenbutsu}}}} 1902]]

Since the dawn of the 20th century historians of [[manga]]—Japanese comics and cartooning—have developed narratives connecting the art form to pre-20th century Japanese art. Particular emphasis falls on the ''Hokusai Manga'' as a precursor, though Hokusai's book is not narrative, nor does the term "manga" originate with Hokusai.{{sfn|Stewart|2014|pp=28–29}} In English and other languages, the word "manga" is used in the restrictive sense of "Japanese comics" or "Japanese-style comics",{{sfn|Stewart|2014|p=30}} while in Japanese it indicates all forms of comics, cartooning,{{sfn|Johnson-Woods|2010|p=336}} and caricature.{{sfn|Morita|2010|p=33}}