are a type of “primitive” ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

style Japanese woodblock prints

Woodblock printing in Japan

Woodblock printing in Japan is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type, but was only...

. They were usually printed in pink (beni) and green, occasionally with the addition of another color, either printed or added by hand. The production of benizuri-e reached its peak in the early 1740s. Torii Kiyohiro, Torii Kiyomitsu I, Torii Kiyonobu I

Torii Kiyonobu I

was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ukiyo-e style, who is renowned for his work on Kabuki signboards and related materials. Along with his father Torii Kiyomoto, he is said to have been one of the founders of the Torii school of painting....

, Okumura Masanobu

Okumura Masanobu

was a Japanese print designer, book publisher, and painter. He also illustrated novelettes and in his early years wrote some fiction. At first his work adhered to the Torii school, but later drifted beyond that. He is a figure in the formative era of ukiyo-e doing early works on actors and bijinga...

, Nishimura Shigenaga, and Ishikawa Toyonobu

Ishikawa Toyonobu

was a Japanese ukiyo-e print artist. He is sometimes said to have been the same person as Nishimura Shigenobu, a contemporary ukiyo-e artist and student of Nishimura Shigenaga about whom very little is known....

are the artists most closely associated with benizuri-e.