May 18, 2024
I love that ukiyo-e back in original days was so cheap for the average person. Maybe can do this with riso prints...
In the late Edo period when ukiyo-e became readily available, an o-ban nishiki-e (39 cm long × 26.5 cm wide), a common size for multi-color woodblock prints, was sold for around 20 mon (approximately 400 yen). Yakusha-e in a hoso-ban (33 cm long × 15 cm wide) size was sold for 8 mon (approximately 160 yen), falling to 3 to 6 mon (approximately 60 to 120 yen) once popularity declined. Many ukiyo-e were intentionally printed in small sizes so that the price was low enough for people to buy. In today’s prices, buying an ukiyo-e was as easy and an inexpensive as buying a snack for less than 500 yen at a convenience store.
