Hokusai X Manga: Japanese Pop Culture since 1680

Early Japanese popular culture, in the form of the coloured woodcuts of artists like Hokusai and Kuniyoshi, achieved world fame after Japan’s opening. The pop culture of today, from manga to anime, has also conquered the globe. Now the sheets and books of woodcuts by the most famous renowned ukiyo-e artists confront the visual mass media in the comics and cartoons of modern Japan.

he high-quality Japanese woodcuts and graphic novels from the 17th to the 19th centuries are products of an urban popular culture in pre-modern Japan, in which clothing, stage stars, myths, monsters, sexuality and commerce were the governing factors. The publication shows the enchanting imagery of both historical and contemporary pop culture in Japan, which today focuses on manga and anime. Short texts spotlight the art of the woodcut in the Edo period, such as the famous shunga sheets, together with selected excerpts from manga, including those by Jir? Taniguchi and Inio Asano as well as the current developments in the manga phenomenon in the Japan of the 21st century.