About the ‘Ukiyo-e and Japanese Sake’ Exhibition

What is Ukiyo-e?

Ukiyo-e is a genre of art that developed during the Edo period. Featuring popular actors and daily life, it vividly depicts society as it was lived at that time. Ukiyo-e can be broadly divided into woodblock prints and hand-painted brush prints. The main focus of this exhibition is ‘Nishiki-e’, a type of multicolor woodblock print that brilliantly captures the trends and colors of the time. Nishiki-e can be published in large quantities, making them an affordable and widely popular form of art with the general public. Through Ukiyo-e, this exhibition aims to portray the culture of sake in Japan from the Edo period to the early Meiji period.

Ukiyo-e and Sake
● Drinking Japanese Sake
・How to Enjoy Sake (11 works)
・Sake and the Four Seasons and Nature (13 works)
・Sake and Rituals (10 works)
● Unchanged Drinking Habits (16 works)
● Sake Drinking Animals (11 works)
● Sake Business
・Buying and Selling of Sake (10 works)
・Brewing and Distribution of Sake (10 works)
・Meiji Era Sake Breweries (10 works)

The details of each work are based on the information provided by their respective holding collections. The following modifications have been made to provide an overall sense of unity and comprehensibility.

・All works by the same author are unified under one name. Example: Works by “Toyokuni III” are unified under “Utagawa Kunisada”.
・Works in a series have the series title listed in quotation marks. Example: ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’ Cushion Pine at Aoyama.
・Years of publication are listed in both the Japanese and Western calendar formats.
・Works owned by overseas holding collections that only have an English title will have that English title (with Japanese translation) listed.