Print Culture and the Modern World

• Printed matter is found in various forms such as books, journals, newspapers, prints of famous paintings, theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries, advertisements, and cinema posters
• Printed literature and images are commonly read and seen, and news is followed through newspapers
• The history of print has shaped the contemporary world
• The earliest print technology was developed in China, Japan, and Korea, using a system of hand printing
• Books in China from AD 594 onwards were printed by rubbing paper against the inked surface of woodblocks
• The traditional Chinese 'accordion book' was folded and stitched at the side due to the inability to print on both sides of the thin, porous sheet
• Imperial China was a major producer of printed material, especially for textbooks used in civil service examinations
• As urban culture flourished in seventeenth-century China, print uses diversified beyond scholar-officials to include merchants and leisure readers
• The new readership in China preferred fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic plays
• Rich women, wives of scholar-officials, and courtesans began publishing their works in China
• Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported to China in the late nineteenth century, leading to a shift from hand printing to mechanical printing
• Shanghai became the center of the new print culture in China, catering to Western-style schools
• Calligraphy is the art of beautiful and stylised writing
• Hand-printing technology was introduced into Japan by Buddhist missionaries from China around AD 768-770
• The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations
• Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards, and paper money
• In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap and abundant
• Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices
• In the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo (later to be known as Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings
• Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material of various types, including books on women, musical instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper etiquette, cooking, and famous places
• Tripitaka Koreana:

  • Belong to the mid-13th century
  • Korean collection of Buddhist scriptures
  • Engraved on about 80,000 woodblocks
  • Inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007
• Kitagawa Utamaro:

  • Born in Edo in 1753
  • Known for contributions to ukiyo art form
  • Ukiyo means 'pictures of the floating world' or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban ones
  • His prints influenced artists like Manet, Monet, and Van Gogh
• Process of creating prints by publishers like Tsutaya Juzaburo:

  • Identify subjects and commission artists
  • Artists draw the theme in outline
  • Skilled woodblock carver pastes the drawing on a woodblock and carves a printing block to reproduce the painter's lines
  • Original drawing is destroyed in the process, only prints survive
• Vellum:

  • A parchment made from the skin of animals
• Silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through the silk route for centuries
• In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe via the silk route, enabling the production of manuscripts carefully written by scribes
• Marco Polo, an explorer, returned to Italy in 1295 after exploring China and brought back the knowledge of woodblock printing
• Italians started producing books with woodblocks after Marco Polo's return, and the technology spread to other parts of Europe
• Luxury editions were handwritten on expensive vellum for aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries, while cheaper printed copies were bought by merchants and students
• Booksellers all over Europe began exporting books to different countries as the demand for books increased
• Book fairs were held at various places to facilitate the distribution of books
• The production of handwritten manuscripts was reorganized to meet the growing demand, with scribes being employed not only by wealthy patrons but also by booksellers
• Despite efforts to meet the demand, handwritten manuscripts were expensive, laborious, fragile, and limited in circulation
• Woodblock printing became popular in Europe by the early fifteenth century, used for printing textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple texts
• The need for quicker and cheaper reproduction of texts led to the invention of a new print technology
• Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s in Strasbourg, Germany, marking a significant breakthrough in printing technology
• The Jikji of Korea is one of the world's oldest existing books printed with movable metal type
• It contains the essential features of Zen Buddhism
• About 150 monks of India, China, and Korea are mentioned in the book
• The Jikji was printed in the late 14th century