Traditional Japanese woodblock prints: Ukiyo-e. They have depicted everything from beautiful women and kabuki actors to famous landscapes, motifs close to the heart of the Japanese in centuries past. In Japan, ukiyo-e prints were a part of popular cu... (more)lture, but abroad they became admired as fine art, and influenced famous artists such as Van Gogh and Monet. On this edition of BEGIN Japanology, our theme is ukiyo-e. Through these works of art, we can glimpse the Japanese sense of beauty.

Peter Barakan, Stuart Varnam-Atkin