Japanese Dragon Poster from Zazzle.com

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This design is an adaptation of Utagawa Kuniyoshi's public domain work of art from an untitled series illustrating dragons. This painting depicts a Dragon flying above turbulent waves. The colors may be enhanced, a border has been set around the painting and artwork has been added to the left-hand side displaying the word Ukiyo-e. Ukiyo-e (pronounced oo-kee-oh-ay) translates as "the floating world". This is an ironic wordplay on the Buddhist name for the earthly plane, "the sorrowful world". Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)a Japanese artist, depicted various kinds of ukiyo-e including musha-e (samurai pictures) with his series of prints entitled “Tsuzoku Suikoden goketsu", yakusha-e (actors series), bijin-ga (beautiful women), fukei-ga (landscapes), shun-ga, geki-ga, and kyo-ga. Kuniyoshi entered the Utagawa school at the age of 15 and studied under Toyokuni (1st). At age 31 he became successful when his ukiyoe of Suiko-den, a famous story of solders in China, was published. Utagawa Kuniyoshi was a cat lover. He owned many cats, and is said that he taught his students while holding cats in his arm. Perhaps this is why you can see so many cats in his artwork. Kuniyoshi Utagawa died from the affects of a stroke on April 14 in 1861. Ukiyo was the name given to the lifestyle in Japan's urban centers of this period - the fashions, the entertainments, and the pleasures of the flesh in other words it portrays the shift in fashions and unstable lives of common people. The lives of actors, courtesans, and other inhabitants of the Japan's amusement districts were portrayed. Buddhist proverbs were made a parody as was the fickle, transient nature of worldly existence. Ukiyo-e is the art documenting the Edo Era is era (1600-1868)in Japan and is especially known for its exceptional woodblock prints. During the Edo era when Japan opened trade with the West in 1867, these popular and inexpensive prints became a well-known influence in Europea, especially France. Ukiyo-e influenced artists like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Whistler and graphic artists known as Les Nabis. The founder of the Ukiyo-e school was the 17th-century artist Hishikawa Moronobu. Among the many famous artists who followed were Ando Hiroshige, Hokusai Katsukika, Kitagawa Utamaro and Toshusai Sharaku. Publishers adapted book-printing techniques to mass-produce inexpensive images for urban merchants and tradesmen who prospered under the rule of the Tokugawa dynasty of shoguns. The Artists designs were cut into cherrywood blocks and printed by skilled craftsmen. An average of 10,000 copies were printed from each block before it wore out. Ukiyo-e artists also painted like this, but print design set the style. Ukiyo-e medium provided many uses such as decoration for home decor, fashion illustrations, book illustrations and travel / entertainment guides. Ukiyo-e as served as promotional material for Kabuki theatres, brothels, teahouses and restaurants. This form of art was also popular on calendars and greeting cards and often used as a form of pornography