Indeed, green one! ^^

At the Academy Awards ceremony, Akira Kurosawa said, "I still don't know much about movies," and I feel that his words have something in common with those of Hokusai.

It was Prussian Blue brought from Europe into Nagasaki

First, the drawing would be made with ink on washi paper, then it would be turned backwards and pasted to a plank of (mostly cherry) wood. Then the key block would be carved from the image. Most of the paper would be rubbed off leaving the lines and the lines would be carved destroying the original drawing in the process.

He used the brushes to sketch/design, I think.

They usually were chucked as soon as they were too warn to print from, and a new block was carved (often decades later) whenever the series was to be reprinted. Source: David Bull, expert 浮世絵 (ukiyo-e) artist & historian.

It was customary as the process dictated, to glue the original to the block and cut the master block, destroying the original. Hokusai originals do exist, often insets, where it never proceeded to the woodblock stage. These were not highly valued as art, but more like graphic novels or magazine covers these days. As far as the master block, they were made from cherry and often "re-used" by sanding them flat and cutting a completely new print image on the block. Some well known or prints designated as more valuable were used and re-used to the point of being worn on the edges or warped. This can be seen on some woodcuts where the fine line edges don't have the fine razor sharp edges that are a feature of earlier prints. Old blocks are extremely rare and seeing that Hokusai alone created tens of thousands of unique printings in his lifetime, it's easy to see why.

It is unfortunate that you are reinterpreting the professor's academic talk with your own prejudices. This kind of art is born from "freedom," which is the opposite of oppression. The idea that "Japan = oppression" is a fabrication by the Western media, just like the idea that "Japan = racism." And you have simply been brainwashed by that stupid lie. According to your logic, America, which has the greatest abundance of commercial art for the masses in the world, would also be the most unfree and oppressed society in the world. What an absolutely stupid prejudice.

Modern Japan is far from being a "stratified society," it is the most non-stratified society in the world. I am sick of the stupidity of racists like you.

>the samurai became management, and most of the farmers became ordinary workers. Are you really stupid? Regardless of origin, samurai or farmers, the more educated became management, and the less educated became workers. Do you really live in a modern society?

​@@001suisen4 Please don't make so many assumptions about me. It is unfortunate that you're interpreting my comment through the lens of your own prejudices and assumptions. I have lived in Japan, I'm married to a Japanese person and I'm not American. Very little of my opinion is generated by the "western media". Rather, it's based on personal observation while in Japan and extensive reading. I never mentioned racism, and nothing in my comment was intended to be racist. I've spent decades studying Japan. If you think that Edo society was "free" when it was extremely restrictive for anyone other than the samurai class, who had the power of life and death over most people of lower rank than themselves is a bit surprising to me. Contemporary Japanese society retains many of the prejudices from the Samurai era, and the top-down management approach stifles creativity and competition. Japan's work culture lead to the coining of a word for "death by work" as well as a term for people who shut themselves off from society. A lot of ukiyo-e was popular because it gave common people an affordable glimpse into a world which they idolised and could probably never experience themselves. In that respect, it was a kind of escapist fiction. Today, a lot of young people (mostly male) lose themselves in manga and anime to escape from an existence with little work-life balance; where they are a slave to the education system or their employer. Please don't tell me that this is an invention of the western media when I have had students falling asleep in classes because of lack of sleep due to the utterly unreasonable schedule they have every day. Don't tell me that the lack of work-life balance is an invention of western media when Japanese friends have had only Sundays as an option for anything social because they work most days until late at night and are as exhausted and time poor as the school and university students. My comment was simply about the manga which Hokusai created, compared to the manga which exists in contemporary Japan and is popular for similarities in the oppression of the ordinary workers in the Edo period and now. You're more than welcome to disagree, but please don't simply dismiss my opinion based on assumptions which you made no attempt to validate. Also - I am not pretending that "Western" society is better than Japanese society. There's lots of issues in "Western" countries too. It's not a question of "good and bad".

What the hell are you talking about?

You keep posting this idiotic comment on all of her lectures - hard to take YOU seriously. Keep focusing on the big stuff

The same information is communicated. Can you explain why it matters? Sounds like elitist nonsense to me.