Guide to Japanese Woodblock Prints of Flowers and Birds

For about three hundred years Japanese artists have made pictures of flowers and birds by carving their images onto a block of wood, inking the carved surface and applying paper to the inked surface. The flowers, birds and artistic styles chosen by artists during this three hundred year period are identified and described with the help of pictures and the results of a quantitative analysis of picture characteristics. The artists' choice of species and style was affected by prevailing social conditions, cultural traditions and foreign artistic influences. These effects are explained to make flower-bird prints less puzzling.