Greatest Ukiyo-e Print

Woodblock prints made for a mass market in Edo Japan, sold cheaply enough that an ordinary person could own several, and now hanging in every major museum in the world.

The production was industrial and collaborative in a way that sits oddly with how these are treated today. A publisher commissioned the design, a carver cut the blocks, a printer applied the inks, and the artist whose name survives did the drawing. Hokusai's Great Wave required around ten separate blocks and was printed in the thousands. The deep blue that makes it famous was an imported synthetic pigment, Prussian blue, which had only recently become affordable in Japan and changed what the whole medium looked like.

Thirty-two prints made the cut, covering waves, rain, Mount Fuji, kabuki actors and a couple of genuine ghosts. Hokusai and Hiroshige dominate the field, which reflects the market rather than any editorial preference. Comparing these is unusually difficult because so many are variations on a series. Several of the Fuji views are the same mountain under different weather, and choosing between them turns out to be a question about weather rather than art.