Bijinga (lit., "beautiful person picture") is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

, especially in woodblock printing

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...

 of the 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...

genre, which predate photography. The term can also be used for modern media, provided the image conforms to a somewhat classic representation of a woman

Yamato Nadeshiko

is a Japanese term meaning "personification of an idealized Japanese woman", "ideal" in the historical context of the patriarchal, traditional culture of Japan...

, usually depicted wearing kimono

Kimono

The is a Japanese traditional garment worn by men, women and children. The word "kimono", which literally means a "thing to wear" , has come to denote these full-length robes...

.

Nearly all ukiyo-e artists produced bijinga, it being one of the central themes of the genre. However, a few, including Utamaro

Utamaro

was a Japanese printmaker and painter, who is considered one of the greatest artists of woodblock prints . His name was romanized as Outamaro. He is known especially for his masterfully composed studies of women, known as bijinga...

, Suzuki Harunobu

Suzuki Harunobu

was a Japanese woodblock print artist, one of the most famous in the Ukiyo-e style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many special techniques, and depicted a wide variety of...

, Ito Shinsui

Ito Shinsui

, was the pseudonym of a Nihonga painter and ukiyo-e woodblock print artist in Taishō and Shōwa period Japan. He was one of the great names of the shin hanga art movement, which revitalized the traditional art after it began to decline with the advent of photography in the early 20th century. His...

, Toyohara Chikanobu

Toyohara Chikanobu

, better known to his contemporaries as , was a prolific woodblock artist of Japan's Meiji period.-Names:Chikanobu signed his artwork . This was his...

 and Torii Kiyonaga

Torii Kiyonaga

This article is about the ukiyo-e artist; for samurai named Kiyonaga, see Naito Kiyonaga and Koriki Kiyonaga. was a Japanese ukiyo-e printmaker and painter of the Torii school. Originally Sekiguchi Shinsuke, the son of an Edo bookseller, he took on Torii Kiyonaga as an art-name...

, are widely regarded as the greatest innovators and masters of the form.

Further reading

• Hamanoka, Shinji. Female Image: 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties. Hotei Publishing 2000. ISBN 90-74822-20-7