The Meiji period in Japan denotes the 45-year reign of the Meiji Emperor running from 23 October 1868 to 30 July 1912. For Japan this was a period of major upheaval: with his naval fleet admiral Perry from the United States had just forced the Japanese people to open up to the outside world. This event resulted in the introduction of Western inventions like photography and bookprint presses in Japan, threatening to put many experienced woodblock print carvers and printers out of business. As a result of all the isolated centuries spent in passing down the crafts of woodblock carving and printing from one generation to the next in a master-pupil relationship, carvers and printers still in business at that time of Japanese history seem to have been at the very top of their craftman abilities.

The prints produced in the Meiji era that I was able to obtain are displayed on this page. Click on any of these images to find out more about their size, publication date, provenance, enlargements, and the English translation of the Japanese texts on each print.

Some of these prints are special in the sense that they were not published separately but as free additions to magazines and novels. These prints called kuchi-e (literally meaning mouth-pictures) are characterized by two clearly visible folding lines. Along these lines, kuchi-e prints were folded in order to fit them into the magazines and books - smaller in size than the prints themselves - to which they were added as freebees. This is how a kuchi-e print - in this case ‘The scent of chrysanthemums’ by Kajita Hanko, see below - looks when folded:

Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912) - Beauty no. 35 in the Shin Bijin (True Beauties) series	Ikeda Terukata (1883-1921) - From the series Brocade pictures of Edo	Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912) - Beauty no. 18 in the Shin Bijin (True Beauties) series
Mizuno Toshikata (1866-1908) - Jakkō-in temple	Takeuchi Keishū (1861-1943) - New Year’s street musician	Tomioka Eisen (1864-1905) - Woman with umbrella
Kajita Hanko (1870-1917) - Plum	Kajita Hanko (1870-1917) - The scent of chrysanthemums	Kaburaki Kiyokata (1878-1973) - Light snow