Japanese art includes various styles such as pottery, sculpture, painting, calligraphy, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and more recently manga and anime. Ukiyo-e prints flourished from the 17th to 19th centuries and featured scenes of everyday life. Different techniques were used in ukiyo-e printing like benizuri-e which added red ink details by hand. Traditional Japanese arts also include origami, theater makeup techniques like kumadori, noh theater masks, and modern manga and anime produced by famous studios like Studio Ghibli.

2. Japanese art includes different art styles and media, including ancient
pottery, sculpture, ink painting, and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e
paintings and woodblock prints, kiri-e, kirigami, origami, and more recently
manga or modern Japanese cartooning and comics.
The Japanese ukiyo-e genre thrived from the 17th through 19th centuries.
Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of female beauties;
kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folktales; travel
scenes and landscapes; and flora and fauna. Ukiyo-e are handmade prints that
enabled printers to blend their favored bright, sharp colors with contours
done with sumi ink on the printing block.

4. Development of Ukiyo-e
A. Ukiyo-e

5. 2. Benizuri-e (crimson printed pictures) – red ink details or
highlights added by hand after the printing process; green was
sometimes used as well

6. 3. Tan-e – orange highlights
using red pigment called tan
4. Aizuri-e (indigo printed pictures)

7. 5. Murasaki-e (purple pictures)
and other styles in which a single
color was used in addition to, or
instead of, black ink
6. Urushi-e – a method that
thickens the ink with glue,
emboldening the image.

8. 7. Nishiki-e (brocade pictures) –
method of using multiple blocks
for separate portions of the image,
using a number of colors to achieve
complex and detailed images. A
separate block was carved to apply
only the part of the image
designated for a single color.

9. B. Painting
Artists painted with pigments made from mineral or organic subtances,
such as safflower, ground shells, lead, and cinnabar, and later synthetic dyes
imported from the West. They painted on silk or paper hanging scrolls
(kakemono), handscrolls (makimono), or folding screens (byobu).

10. C. Origami
The goal of origami (paper folding) is to
transform a sheet of paper into a finished
sculpture through folding and sculpting
techniques. Practitioners discourage cutting,
gluing, or markings on the paper. The
principles of origami are also used in stents,
packaging, and other engineering
applications.
Traditional original paper (washi) is used
because it is stronger than the ordinary
paper. Washi is made from the bark fibers of
the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub, or the
paper mulberry, but it can also be made using
bamboo, hemp, rice and wheat.

11. Types of Origami
1. Action origami – these includes origami flies, requires inflation to complete,
or when complete, uses the kinetic energy of a person’s hands, applied at a certain
region on the model, to move another flap or limp when completed.

12. 2. Modular origami – these consists of putting a number of identical pieces
together to form a complete model.

13. 3. Wet Folding – this is a technique for producing models with gentle curves
rather than geometric straight folds and flat surfaces. In this technique, paper is
damped so it can be manipulated easily. The final model keeping its shape when
it dries.

14. 4. Kirigami – refers to designs that use scissors.

15. 5. Noshi – a kind of ceremonial origami attached to gifts to express the
sender’s good wishes. It consists of white paper folded with a strip of dried
abalone as a token of good fortune. The noshi is held together with a strip of
paper or with a mizuhiki.

16. D. Kumadori
Asian theater includes the most sophisticated face painting designs in
the world, such as the kumadori makeup tradition of Japan. The
metamorphosis of a Kabuki actor begins in his make up. They call it “face
making” or “face preparation” and helps transform them to become living
special effects that help present the story.

17. Functions of kumadori makeup:
1. To capture and project the expressions of the actor in enhanced
form
2. To externalize the inner persona of the role through a design that
responds to the actor’s features

18. E. Theater Masks
Noh masks are carved from blocks of Japanese cypress and painted with
natural pigments on a neutral base of glue and crunched seashells. These
masks tell he characters’ gender, age, and social ranking and by wearing them,
actors can portray old men and women, youngsters, or nonhuman characters
like divine, demon, or animal.

19. F. Manga and Anime
Manga books and comics are generally printed in black and white and
cover a variety of genres and subject that appeal to both sexes and all ages.
Themes include action-adventure, business/commerce, comedy, detective,
historical drama, horror mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy,
sexuality, sports and games, and suspense, among others. Most manga
aimed for children uses simply style and adorable characters with big eyes
to enable the artists to convey emotions easily.
Anime differs from manga in its use of color, movement, and sound
especially its theme song. In Japan, manga refers to all cartooning, comics,
and animation. Outside Japan, comics produced from animation are called
ani-manga.

21. Studio Ghibi, founded in 1985 has produced numerous original feature films
in animated form. Hayao Miyazaki, a critically acclaimed animator has created
films which have touched the hearts of people from all over the world. His
animation style is very unique because his characters is tend to have small eyes ,
rather than usual trend for larger eyes and most of his protagonists are strong
independent girls or women.
Hayao Miyazaki Spirited Away – a Hayao Miyazaki film