Japanese Woodblock Printing

The Great Wave of Kanagawa - an iconic woodblock print by Japanese artist Hokusai
source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa.jpg/800px-Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa.jpg

Recently, I took up a Japanese Woodblock Printing course organised by the Oxford Summer School (website). The summer school offers many art courses taught by local artists and craftsmen, and they are surprisingly popular as most of the classes are full by early summer. I only managed to get into the Japanese Woodblock Printing course after a few weeks on the waiting list.


I have always admired Japanese woodblock prints because of the high level of details portrayed in the art. While at Oxford, I had the chance to see Ashmolean Museum's collection of Ukiyo-e (浮世绘) prints, which is a series of prints based on Japanese folklores of ghosts, demons and warriors (check out this PDF file about the collection). These prints are usually kept in storage to preserve the papers and colours, and I only got to see them as part of a special tour during Ashmolean's halloween-themed "Live Friday Night" event.

On my first day, I was not surprised to find out that a majority of the summer school participants were older people/ retirees and women. Being the only "young" Asian woman in my class, I often got mistaken for a Japanese person - some politely asked if I were, and some just directly assumed that I was - but they were always nice enough to apologise when they realised what I am.

First day of class

Coincidentally, two random ladies who approached me during break time claimed that they had lived in Malaya when their father were serving the colonial government. We had some interesting conversations about their memories of Malaya and how the country is doing now. It struck me how close a connection Malaysians have with the Brits due to our shared history, which is a very different experience compared to the people I encountered when studying in the U.S. - conversations tend to be about China, Thailand and Southeast Asia in general, and people usually have vague or almost no impressions of Malaysia (perhaps this has changed after the 1MDB issues put Malaysia prominently on the global stage for the wrong reason).

Anyhow, it was a very interesting environment. You see clusters of seniors gathering in different corners of the school happily chatting away -  apparently many of them have been coming to the summer school every year, so they kind of know each other - their level of energy and interest in learning were really inspiring!

My instructor was Laura Boswell (website), an established printmaker in UK who had spent time in Japan learning from Japanese master carver and printer. Based on what I learned from Youtube videos, printmaking can be a rather laborious and complicated process. It was hard to believe at first that I would be able to design and complete a print within five days of lessons. But Laura kept the class at a good pace, and was patient and encouraging throughout.

Laura showing the class some printing techniques

I decided to base my print design on a photo of Mount Fuji, taken during my trip to Lake Kawaguchi in 2015. In the next post, I will share more about the process of creating the print and the final result!

View of Mount Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi