Background and Scope |
The Library's Prints and Photographs Division houses more than 2,500 woodblock prints and drawings by Japanese artists of the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries including Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, Sadahide, and Yoshiiku. Catalog records for the prints in the collection are continuously being added to the online catalog. About seventy percent of the collection is currently available online (the remainder of the holdings are available under the Division's Access to Unprocessed Materials policy). The Library of Congress appreciates the financial support provided by Nicihibunken (International Research Center for Japanese Studies, an Inter-University Research Institute Corporation) to scan 1,100 of the Ukiyo-e prints.
Subjects frequently depicted in the prints include:
The Library acquired its Japanese woodblock print holdings from a host of different donors and collectors including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, President William Howard Taft, Crosby Stuart Noyes, and Emily Crane Chadbourne
Many schools, traditions, and genres are represented, notably surimono, privately distributed prints combining pictures and poetry, and prints from the Russo-Japanese and Sino-Japanese wars. However, the primary strengths of the collection are the Japanese art forms known as
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful 250 years during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the shogunal seat of power.
Crosby Stuart Noyes, an owner and editor-in-chief of the former Washington Evening Star, assembled what is now the Library's most extensive collection of Ukiyo-e, including about 1,300 prints, drawings, and illustrated books. More than 100 works from the Library's full collection of about 2500 Ukiyo-e prints are currently online. The Library of Congress exhibition The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance featured many of the prints, and the exhibition website includes additional information about collection themes and specific works.
American naval officer Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794-1858) led an expedition to Japan between 1852 and 1854 that was instrumental in opening Japan to the Western world after more than 200 years of national seclusion (a policy adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate). New trade agreements beginning in the 1850s resulted in an unprecedented flow of travelers and goods between Japan and the West.
In addition to eye-witness accounts, Yokohama-e often borrowed imagery from secondary sources, such as wood engravings in Western journals and newspapers. Yokohama-e artists also took frequent advantage of bright aniline dyes to heighten the visual intensity of their images.
Emily Crane Chadbourne donated most of the Yokohama prints currently in the Library's collection, and the entire Chadbourne Collection (about 180 prints) is online.