Japanese Ukiyo-e Skateboard Art: Hokusai, Kuniyoshi and the Woodblock Tradition

Last updated: July 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin · 16 min read

Of everything in the catalogue, Japanese woodblock prints are the work that needs the least justification for being on a skateboard.

Ukiyo-e was never precious. These were commercial prints, produced in large editions, sold cheaply on the street in Edo to ordinary people who wanted a picture of an actor they liked or a view of a mountain. A single print cost roughly what a bowl of noodles cost. They were made by teams — an artist, a block carver, a printer, a publisher — using a repeatable industrial process, and nobody involved thought of them as museum objects.

Two centuries later they hang in the Met and the British Museum, and a good original impression sells for a great deal of money. But the work itself was popular art, made by craftsmen, printed in quantity, meant for the wall of a normal home. Putting it on a mass-produced wooden object priced for a normal person is not a subversion of what ukiyo-e was. It is a fairly exact continuation of it.

What ukiyo-e actually is

Ukiyo-e translates roughly as "pictures of the floating world." The floating world was the pleasure districts of Edo — the theatres, the teahouses, the entertainment quarters — and by extension the whole idea of living in the transient present rather than worrying about the next life. The prints depicted what that world contained: kabuki actors, courtesans, sumo wrestlers, ghost stories, and eventually landscapes and travel.

The production process matters for understanding why these images reproduce so well on wood, because it was itself a printing process on wood.

An artist supplied a drawing. A carver pasted it face down onto a block of cherry wood and cut away everything that was not line, destroying the original drawing in the process. Then a separate block was carved for each colour in the image. A printer inked the blocks in sequence and pressed the paper onto each one by hand, using registration marks cut into the blocks to keep every layer aligned.

Three consequences shaped the visual language, and all three are why ukiyo-e works on a deck:

• Flat areas of colour. Each block prints one flat colour, so the style developed around clean fields rather than blended modelling. Flat colour survives any reproduction.
• Strong black outline. The key block carried the drawing, and that line holds the whole image together. It stays legible at any size.
• Bold, simplified composition. Complexity meant more blocks and more cost, so the best designers achieved maximum impact with minimum means.

This is the opposite of, say, Leonardo's sfumato, which depends on infinitely graded transitions and loses something in every reproduction. A woodblock print is a design built for repeatable printing. Reproducing it faithfully is a much smaller ask.

Hokusai: The Great Wave off Kanagawa — €230

Katsushika Hokusai was around seventy when he made the most reproduced image in the history of Japanese art, and it was not intended as a standalone masterpiece. The Great Wave is one sheet from Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, a commercial series published around 1831 to capitalise on a boom in domestic travel and a popular cult around the mountain.

Several things about it are commonly misunderstood, and they are worth knowing because they change how you read the picture.

It is not a tsunami. It is an okinami, a large offshore wave — the kind that regularly threatened boats in Sagami Bay. The drama is ordinary working danger, not catastrophe.

The boats are delivery vessels. Those are oshiokuri-bune, fast boats carrying fresh fish to market in Edo. There are eight rowers visible in each, crouched flat. They are not heroic figures fighting the sea; they are workers caught in weather, doing their job.

Mount Fuji is the subject. It sits small and still at the centre of the composition, framed by the wave's curve. The whole series is about Fuji, and the wave is a device for looking at it. Once you see the mountain as the subject and the wave as the frame, the image reorganises itself.

The claws are deliberate. The foam breaks into finger-like forms reaching down at the boats — a stylisation, not observation, and the reason the image reads as menacing rather than merely large.

Hokusai signed it as "Hokusai, changing his name to Iitsu" — he used over thirty names across his career, changing them at points of artistic reinvention. He wrote late in life that nothing he had produced before seventy was of any value, and that if he could live to a hundred and ten every dot and line would be alive. He died at eighty-nine, reportedly asking for five more years.

The Berlin blue connection

There is a detail here that is genuinely pleasing for a company printing in Berlin.

The deep blue that makes the Great Wave what it is was not a traditional Japanese pigment. It is Prussian blue, the first modern synthetic pigment, discovered in Berlin around 1706. Japanese artists knew it as bero-ai — a contraction of "Berlin indigo" — and it arrived through Dutch traders at Nagasaki, one of the very few channels open during Japan's period of closed borders.

Traditional Japanese blues came from indigo and from dayflower, and both faded badly. Prussian blue did not. It was intense, stable, and it held its depth over decades. When it became affordable in the late 1820s, printmakers seized on it, and an entire fashion for blue-dominant prints followed.

The Great Wave sits right at the start of that moment. Its blues were, in a literal sense, a new technology — an imported industrial pigment from Berlin, changing what Japanese printmakers could do. Two centuries later the image is printed in Berlin, using a different new technology, onto Canadian maple. We did not plan that symmetry, but we are not going to pretend we dislike it.

It also explains why the piece is so easy to place in a modern interior: that Prussian blue is a cool, deep, stable colour that sits comfortably against grey, concrete, white and pale wood. Our decorating guide covers the palette matching in detail.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi: samurai and kabuki

If Hokusai is the landscape master, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) is the one who made the loud, dense, dramatic prints — warriors mid-battle, monsters, ghosts, tattooed heroes. He is the ukiyo-e artist whose influence you can see most directly in modern manga, tattoo work and skate graphics.

Kuniyoshi Samurai — €140. Kuniyoshi's warrior prints, musha-e, made his reputation. His breakthrough series depicted the 108 heroes of a Chinese outlaw novel, each rendered as a heavily tattooed fighter in violent motion. The series was a commercial sensation and reportedly drove a fashion for tattooing in Edo. The figures are typically shown at the peak of an action, with fabric and hair thrown into patterns that fill the whole sheet.

Kuniyoshi Kabuki Actors diptych — €230. Actor prints, yakusha-e, were the celebrity photography of Edo: fans bought images of their favourite kabuki performers in famous roles, in editions large enough to be genuinely popular media.

There is a good story attached. In the 1840s the Tenpō Reforms banned prints of actors and courtesans as morally corrupting luxuries. Kuniyoshi's response was to keep making them in disguise — actors depicted as animals, as goldfish, as historical figures, as sketchy graffiti — so that everyone recognised the performer while the print technically depicted something else. It is a straightforwardly punk response to censorship from 1843, and it is part of why his work reads as contemporary now.

Sakura and koi: the motif pieces

Two pieces in the range work through motif rather than through a named historical print, and both carry meanings worth knowing before you hang them.

Sakura Bloom diptych — €230. Cherry blossom in Japanese art is never simply decorative. It carries mono no aware, the awareness of transience and the gentle sadness that comes with it. The blossom matters precisely because it lasts about a week: the annual practice of hanami, sitting under the trees while they flower, is a scheduled encounter with impermanence.

Practically, this is the calmest piece in the Japanese range and the easiest to live with. Pale pinks and whites against a soft ground, no strong focal point demanding attention, nothing to unsettle a bedroom. If Almond Blossom is the Western choice for a restful room, Sakura is its direct counterpart — and the two are not unrelated, since Van Gogh was working under heavy Japanese influence when he painted blossom against flat blue sky.

Koi Fish Waves — €140. Koi carry a specific meaning rather than a general one: perseverance against difficulty. It comes from the Chinese legend of the Dragon Gate, in which a carp that succeeds in swimming up a waterfall is transformed into a dragon. The fish became a standard symbol of determination, and in Japan the carp streamers flown for Children's Day carry exactly that wish.

That makes it one of the few pieces in the whole catalogue with a genuinely apt use as a gift for someone starting something hard — a new business, a degree, a recovery. Our gift guide covers matching work to occasion more broadly.

Why the diptych format is historically correct

This is the part that makes the Japanese range fit the medium better than any other category we print, and it is not a marketing claim — it is how these prints were actually published.

Ukiyo-e was produced in standard paper sizes, the most common being ōban, roughly 39 × 26 cm. When a designer wanted a wider composition, the answer was not a bigger sheet. It was two or three ōban sheets designed as a single continuous image, printed separately and displayed together. Diptychs and triptychs were an ordinary part of the format vocabulary, especially for battle scenes, theatre panoramas and landscapes that needed width.

Which means a Japanese print spread across two panels with a gap between them is not a compromise imposed by the deck shape. It is the arrangement the tradition already used, for the same reason: the image wanted to be wider than one sheet.

The alignment problem is also the same. A ukiyo-e triptych required each sheet to be printed so that lines continued correctly across the join, using registration marks called kentō cut into every block. A deck diptych requires the same discipline in the print file, and it hangs with a fixed 5 cm gap for the same reason — the image is designed around that spacing. Change it and the composition stretches. Our sizing guide covers the measurements: a diptych spans 171 cm, which suits a standard three-seat sofa or a king bed.

Which room, which piece

Two placement notes. The Great Wave is the single most placeable piece we sell. Its palette is cool and limited, its composition is balanced, and it carries enough cultural weight to work in a professional setting without looking like a statement. If you want one piece that will not fight anything, it is this one.

Kuniyoshi needs room to be loud. The warrior and actor prints are dense, high-contrast and full of movement. In a minimal pale room they dominate everything; against a dark wall, exposed brick or in a hallway you pass through, they are superb.

The Japanese range also suits the interior style sometimes called Japandi — the overlap of Japanese restraint and Scandinavian pale-wood minimalism. Here the natural maple edge of the deck stops being incidental and becomes part of why it works: the exposed wood grain and the print belong to the same visual logic.

Copyright and the public domain

Hokusai died in 1849 and Kuniyoshi in 1861. Copyright in an artistic work generally lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years in the EU and the UK, so these works have been in the public domain since long before modern copyright law existed. Reproducing, printing and selling reproductions requires no permission and no royalties — the same basis on which the British Museum and the Met sell prints from their own ukiyo-e holdings.

Two qualifications, the same ones that apply across our classical range. A modern photograph of an original print can carry its own copyright where the photographer made original creative choices, and museum names and logos remain trademarks regardless of the age of the work. We prepare our own reproduction files and use no museum branding.

The sakura and koi pieces are a different case again: they are motif works in a Japanese style rather than reproductions of specific historical prints, so no attribution question arises.

And the rule runs in the other direction too. Twentieth-century Japanese printmakers — the shin-hanga and sōsaku-hanga movements — are frequently still in copyright, and we do not print them, however much demand exists for that work.

Frequently asked questions

What is ukiyo-e?

Ukiyo-e translates roughly as "pictures of the floating world," the floating world being the pleasure districts of Edo — theatres, teahouses and entertainment quarters — and by extension the idea of living in the transient present. It refers to Japanese woodblock prints produced mainly between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, depicting kabuki actors, courtesans, sumo wrestlers, ghost stories, landscapes and travel. They were made collaboratively by an artist, a block carver, a printer and a publisher, in large commercial editions sold cheaply to ordinary people. A single print cost roughly what a bowl of noodles cost. The visual language — flat areas of colour, strong black outlines and bold simplified composition — developed directly from the constraints of carving a separate block for each colour.

Is The Great Wave off Kanagawa a tsunami?

No. It depicts an okinami, a large offshore wave of the kind that regularly threatened boats in Sagami Bay, not a tsunami. The boats are oshiokuri-bune, fast vessels carrying fresh fish to market in Edo, each with around eight rowers crouched flat against the hull. They are workers caught in weather rather than heroic figures fighting the sea. It is also worth noting that Mount Fuji, sitting small and still at the centre of the composition, is the actual subject: the print is one sheet from Hokusai's series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, published around 1831, and the wave functions as a frame for the mountain. The claw-like forms in the foam are a deliberate stylisation rather than observation.

Why is The Great Wave blue?

The deep blue is Prussian blue, the first modern synthetic pigment, discovered in Berlin around 1706 and known to Japanese artists as bero-ai, a contraction of "Berlin indigo." It reached Japan through Dutch traders at Nagasaki, one of very few channels open during the period of closed borders. Traditional Japanese blues came from indigo and dayflower and both faded badly, whereas Prussian blue was intense, stable and held its depth over decades. When it became affordable in the late 1820s, printmakers adopted it rapidly and a fashion for blue-dominant prints followed. The Great Wave sits at the start of that moment, which means its colour was effectively a new imported technology at the time it was made.

Were Japanese woodblock prints made as diptychs and triptychs?

Yes, routinely. Ukiyo-e was produced in standard paper sizes, most commonly ōban at roughly 39 × 26 cm. When a designer wanted a wider composition, the solution was not a larger sheet but two or three ōban sheets designed as one continuous image, printed separately and displayed together. Diptychs and triptychs were an ordinary part of the format vocabulary, particularly for battle scenes, theatre panoramas and wide landscapes. Alignment across the join was managed with registration marks called kentō cut into every block. This is why a Japanese print spread across two deck panels is historically appropriate rather than a compromise: the tradition already used exactly that arrangement, for the same reason.

Who was Utagawa Kuniyoshi?

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) was the ukiyo-e artist known for dense, dramatic prints of warriors, monsters, ghosts and kabuki actors, and his influence is visible in modern manga, tattoo work and skate graphics. His breakthrough was a series depicting the 108 heroes of a Chinese outlaw novel as heavily tattooed fighters in violent motion, which reportedly drove a fashion for tattooing in Edo. When the Tenpō Reforms of the 1840s banned prints of actors and courtesans as morally corrupting, Kuniyoshi continued making them in disguise — actors depicted as animals, goldfish, historical figures or rough graffiti — so that audiences recognised the performer while the print technically showed something else.

What does cherry blossom mean in Japanese art?

Cherry blossom carries mono no aware, the awareness of transience and the gentle sadness accompanying it. The blossom is meaningful precisely because it lasts roughly a week, and the annual practice of hanami — sitting beneath the trees while they flower — amounts to a scheduled encounter with impermanence. It is never purely decorative in Japanese art. Practically, sakura pieces are among the calmest available for interiors: pale pinks and whites against a soft ground, with no strong focal point demanding attention, which makes them well suited to bedrooms and quiet rooms where a high-contrast image would be unrestful.

Article summary

deckarts prints Japanese ukiyo-e onto Grade-A Canadian maple, with singles at 85 × 20 cm for €140 and diptychs at 171 cm for €230. The range covers Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa, Utagawa Kuniyoshi's samurai and kabuki actor prints, and sakura and koi motif pieces. Ukiyo-e suits the format for two reasons. First, it was affordable, mass-produced popular art rather than elite painting — sold cheaply on the streets of Edo — so reproducing it on an inexpensive wooden object continues rather than subverts what it was. Second, ukiyo-e was routinely published as diptychs and triptychs, with multiple standard-size sheets designed as one continuous image and aligned using registration marks, which is exactly how a multi-panel deck set works. The Great Wave depicts an offshore wave rather than a tsunami, with Mount Fuji as the true subject, and its famous blue is Prussian blue imported from Berlin and known in Japan as bero-ai. Flat colour and strong outline mean these prints survive reproduction better than almost any Western painting. All artists in the range died in the nineteenth century, so the work is in the public domain.

About the author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of deckarts, a graphic designer and print specialist originally from Ukraine, now based in Berlin, where he personally designs and prepares every deck. Follow the work on Instagram or at stasarnautov.com.