Things Japanese. Nicholas Bornoff

      Ukiyo-e

       浮世絵

       woodblock prints

      Holding pride of place out of all things Japanese in western eyes, ukiyo-e were one of the items which no serious 19th-century travellers to Japan failed to bring back home with them. Ukiyo-e began not as woodblock prints as such, but as a style of painting in the mid 17th century. Melding the styles of the Tosa school (purely Japanese genre painting) and the Kano school (Japanese reworking of Chinese painting) together, the exponents sought subject matter for their e (pictures) in the ukiyo (the floating world)—the term coined for the urban pleasure quarters grudgingly conceded by the dictatorial Tokugawa shoguns, the rulers of Japan between 1603 and 1867.

      Combining all the provinces of pleasure of Edo (Tokyo) together—Kabuki theatre, tea-houses, taverns, restaurants and brothels—'the floating world' was the haunt of high fashionistas and constituted a crucible for Japanese culture. Focusing on subjects like geisha, prostitutes, Kabuki actors, erotica and aspects of contemporary life, ukiyo-e also embraced historical subjects, landscapes, ghost stories, naturalism and still-life. Lasting some 150 years, and still highly collectible today, the genre still presents us with a window on a vanished world.

      The popularization of ukiyo-e is generally attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-94), a prominent book illustrator who pioneered the single print. Many of the books of the day (for example, warai-bon; laughing books) were designed for the titillation of the townsman; much of the output was graphically erotic shunga (spring pictures). The skills ukiyo-e artists displayed with using colour and texture to depict clothing found many prints dubbed 'brocade pictures'; these artists were nothing if not versatile. Dab-hands at pornography, Harunobu (1724-70) and his contemporary Koryūsai also made many charming prints of pleasure quarter girls doing more mundane things; the same applied even more to the great Utamaro (1750-1806) whose celebrated bijin-ga (beautiful person pictures) are masterpieces both of composition and technical skill. Capable of consummate depictions of anything and everything (including sex), the innovative Katsuhika Hokusai (1760-1849) also widened the horizons of the medium with many landscapes and travel themes, a genre greatly popularized by Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858).

      Although some ukiyo-e had reached Europe earlier in the 19th century via the Dutch (the only people other than Chinese permitted to trade in Japan during the Edo period), it was in France that they had the most significant impact. Popular wisdom had it that the prints were used in Japan to wrap fish, and that they first came to the attention of French aesthetes because they were used to pack Japanese export chinaware. But the first of these notions is sheer nonsense, the second at best apocryphal. Opened in 1862 and renowned among connoisseurs of oriental art, a shop and tea salon called 'La Porte Chinoise' made its reputation above all from importing Japanese prints. The prints soon had a profound influence on French art, first of all on Manet and Degas, then on Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Van Gogh and the impressionists. Announcing bold new steps in design and asymmetrical composition, ukiyo-e changed the entire course of Western art and design.

      The prints that were most popular abroad in the 1890s were already old as the great masters such as Utamaro and Hokusai had belonged to the century before. Produced in ever larger numbers and pandering increasingly to popular taste, ukiyo-e went into decline quite early in the 19th century. That said, there were still plenty of quality works around produced by 'decadents' such as Toyokuni and Kunisada. Although ukiyo-e declined as such with the demise of the eponymous pleasure quarters, the woodblock print remained a medium of choice for many significant Japanese artists well into the modern era.

      Tatami

       畳

       tatami mats

      Despite the westernization of architecture in Japan during the past century, postwar reconstruction and later building sprees, some things never change. For all its ferro-concrete and glass and for all the wall-to-wall carpeting, even the highest modern residential apartment block may not be as thoroughly western as it first seems: living spaces within will usually contain at least one Japanese-style room—distinguished by tatami mats.

      "Upon these mats the people eat, sleep, and die," wrote the American Japan-scholar Edward Morse in the 1880s, "they represent the bed, chair, lounge and sometimes table, combined." Though many families nowadays prefer a kitchen table, they will always dine around a low table on the tatami mats when there are guests. Western beds are becoming common, but many people still roll out futon bedding (see overleaf) straight onto the floor. Tatami mats are also resilient, which is why foreigners often find sleeping on a comparatively thin futon far more comfortable than they anticipated.

      Popular among the aristocracy during the 8th century, tatami mats were originally used as beds. In a world without chairs, the thin matting hitherto partially covering floors did little to alleviate the discomfort of hard wood, so tatami gradually came to be used as flooring too. Rules came about governing the size—the thickest being an Imperial preserve—but from the Edo period (1603-1868), tatami came to be used increasingly in ordinary homes.

      Tatami mats each consist of thousands of stems of a rush called igusa tightly stitched together. Covered with very dose-woven matting, tatami feel smooth to the touch. The sides are trimmed with thin decorative strips of fabric—the quality varying according to the price. Filling the house with a scent like new-mown hay, tatami are a light greyish-green when new, fading to warm yellow as they age. About 10 cm (4 in) thick, tatami are disposed according to set patterns; with eight mats and more, they describe a spiral around the central pair. Tatami mats absorb moisture, providing welcome coolness during the muggy, hot summers; another remarkable property is the recently discovered capacity for absorbing air pollutants such as exhaust gas.

      The size of a Japanese room is expressed in terms of the number of tatami mats, running from two, three to four and a half, then six, eight, ten mats and upwards, following the twice-times table. The yojōhan (four-and-a-half mat room) is an exception devised because the Japanese shun the number four on its own. The number four is considered unlucky as the character to describe it can be pronounced 'shi', a homonym for the Japanese word for death.

      Tatami sizes are standardized, but there are regional variants, Kyō-ma (from Kyoto) being slightly larger than the smallest Kantō-ma (Tokyo), with Chūkyō-ma (Nagoya) in between. When real estate offices advertise properties they often refer to the Kantō mat, 176 cm x 88 cm (5 ft 9 in x 3 ft), which is now pretty well the national standard—a sign of the current premium on space.

      Until very recently there used to be a tatami maker in every neighbourhood but, in the wake of so many cheaper imports from Taiwan and China, their number is decreasing, but not dying out. The mats are generally imported bundled and stitched, but the cutting, covering and custom trimmings are mainly undertaken in Japan—where this beautiful and remarkably practical flooring concept is likely to remain in vogue for quite some time.

      Futon

       布団

       futons

      I was forewarned that I would be sleeping on a mattress on the floor when I first went to Japan in 1979, but it didn't bother me over much. The night I first entered my apartment, however, I was a little shaken. There was a

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