Considering the enormous popularity of Japanese woodblock prints, it is curious that there have been so few reference works offering comprehensive information on all the areas of knowledge involved. The first to attempt a systematic overview of the field in English was not published until 1978 -- Richard Lane's "Images from the Floating World."
There are reasons for this late appearance of a publication with such cyclopedic ambitions. One was the late recognition in Japan of woodblock prints as a field of art, and therefore of being worthy of attention in any art-history curriculum. Another was the difficult level of the language of the source material -- which even today poses problems for scholars. Prints were often, therefore, in the hands of collectors and dealers who were unable to read and interpret the sources.
The lack of an early major reference work could also be attributed to the paucity of the material itself. Woodblock prints, though printed in the thousands, were never intended for museums or encyclopedias.
After a few viewings they might be used to wrap the tea lees, or patch a shoji, or serve as wrapping paper.
It was this last use that led to their discovery as an art form. A number of prints, all wadded up, had been used as packing for an objet d'art being sent to Paris. The recipient (sometimes identified as Edmond de Goncourt) smoothed out the wrappings, tossed aside the objet, and showed the prints to his friends. These friends eventually included such artists as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh -- and it was from here that the European vogue for the Japanese print came about.
When it was discovered that l'art japonais was sweeping the Continent, there became a sudden Japanese interest in this neglected art form, especially when it was realized that foreign collectors would pay large sums for prime examples. And even larger amounts for the more rare.
But by then all prints were more or less rare. Many are now known only through a single surviving example -- and this includes work by such famous woodblock artists as Toshusai Sharaku and Suzuki Harunobu. This is one of the reasons they became collectibles for, as some sage has somewhere said, human beings are "animals that collect."
It is also a reason why there has been a need for a comprehensive, up-to-date, methodologically modern reference work offering comprehensive information on all the areas of Japanese prints involved. And this need has now been satisfied by the authoritative, complete and beautiful "Hotei Encyclopedia."
Laid out in a user-friendly manner, the first volume begins with two essays giving historical perspective, one covering the Edo period, the other going through the Meiji to Taisho Eras. We then move in for a closer view as the periods are divided into areas of interest ("Shunga in the Edo Period," "The Yoshiwara and the Ukiyo-e," etc.) up to and including early modernity as well as separate essays on commerce, materials and techniques, and on the history of Japanese print collecting.
The second volume includes an artist index; well over 2,000 carefully cross-referenced entries on individual print designers and schools; publishers, carvers, printers and collectors; as well as materials and techniques, conservation and iconography; lineage charts, chronological and historical tables, maps, signature facsimiles, censor and publisher seals; and a concordance of artists' names.
The text is by authorities in the field, and if I do not list their names and the titles of their various essays, it is because to do so would take most of this review. Both volumes are profusely illustrated, beautifully printed in the Netherlands and, as a result, will long remain a monument to scholarship.
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