Print Culture and the Modern World
The first printed books
Describe how printing began in East Asia.
A world full of print. Books, newspapers, calendars, posters, circulars: print is everywhere, and we forget there was a time before it. This chapter follows print from East Asia to Europe and India, and asks how it changed people's lives.
Printing began in East Asia. The first printing was by hand, in China, Japan and Korea. From AD 594, Chinese books were printed by rubbing paper (also a Chinese invention) against inked woodblocks. The paper was thin, so only one side of each sheet could be printed; the sheets were folded and stitched at the side into an 'accordion book'. Skilled craftsmen could copy beautiful calligraphy (artistic handwriting) very accurately.
Print in China. For a long time the imperial state was the biggest printer. China chose its officials through civil service examinations, and the state printed textbooks for them in huge numbers; as candidates grew from the 16th century, so did printing. By the 17th century print spread beyond scholars:
- merchants used it for trade information;
- reading became a hobby: people enjoyed stories, poetry, autobiographies and plays;
- wealthy women started reading, and many published poems and plays of their own.
In the late 19th century, Western mechanical presses arrived, and Shanghai became the centre of the new print culture.
Print in Japan. Buddhist missionaries from China brought hand printing to Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest printed Chinese book, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra (AD 868), has six sheets of text and woodcut pictures. In medieval Japan, books were cheap and plentiful. In late 18th-century Edo (today's Tokyo), illustrated books showed elegant city life, and shops were full of books on women, music, tea ceremony, flower arranging, cooking and famous places.
Utamaro and ukiyo prints. Kitagawa Utamaro (born 1753, in Edo) was famous for ukiyo ('pictures of the floating world'): scenes of ordinary city life. A publisher chose the subject, the artist drew the outline, and a carver pasted the drawing onto a woodblock and carved it, so the original drawing was destroyed and only prints survived. These prints reached Europe and the US and influenced Manet, Monet and Van Gogh.
Korea. The Tripitaka Koreana, a collection of Buddhist scriptures from the mid-13th century, was carved on about 80,000 woodblocks. The Jikji, printed in the late 14th century, is among the world's oldest books printed with movable metal type; it is about Zen Buddhism. Both are on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
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