‘By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of printdiversified.’ Substantiate the answer with examples.

Which of the following was NOT a use of paper in Ancient China?Wall decorationsRecording textPaddingToilet paper

Where did printmaking originate from?ChinaEuropeGreeceAmerica

What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to:a) Womenb) The poorc) Reformers

Why do you think printmaking was important for human history?

It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. Wefind evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,newspapers, prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday thingslike theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printedliterature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,and track public debates that appear in print. We take for grantedthis world of print and often forget that there was a time beforeprint. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, infact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? Whendid printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped createthe modern world?In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from itsbeginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. Wewill understand the impact of the spread of technology and considerhow social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.P r i n t C u l t u r e a n d t h e M o d e r n W o r l d Chapter VIIPrint Culture and the Modern WorldFig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, fromAkhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,much before printing began in India. You can seethe text being dictated, written and illustrated. Theart of writing and illustrating by hand wasimportant in the age before print. Think aboutwhat happened to these forms of art with thecoming of printing machines.India and the Contemporary World1541 The First Printed BooksFig. 2 – A page from the Diamond Sutra.The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japanand Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – alsoinvented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As bothsides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditionalChinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy,the beauty of calligraphy.The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the majorproducer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucraticsystem which recruited its personnel through civil serviceexaminations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vastnumbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state. From thesixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went upand that increased the volume of print.By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, theuses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collectedtrade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry,autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romanticplays. Rich women began to read, and many women beganpublishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials publishedtheir works and courtesans wrote about their lives.This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology.Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were importedin the late nineteenth century as Western powers established theiroutposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there wasnow a gradual shift to mechanical printing.1.1 Print in JapanBuddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printingtechnology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book,printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheetsof text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles,New wordsCalligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylisedwriting155Print Cultureplaying cards and paper money. In medieval Japan, poets andprose writers were regularly published, and books were cheapand abundant.Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. Inthe late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo(later to be known as Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintingsdepicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, andteahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookstores were packed withhand-printed material of various types – books on women, musicalinstruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, properetiquette, cooking and famous places.Box 1Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known forhis contributions to an art form calledukiyo (‘pictures of the floatingworld’) or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urbanones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe andinfluenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Publishers likeTsutaya Juzaburo identified subjects and commissioned artists whodrew the theme in outline. Then a skilled woodblock carver pastedthe drawing on a woodblock and carved a printing block toreproduce the painter’s lines. In the process, the original drawingwould be destroyed and only prints would survive.Fig. 3 – An ukiyoprint by KitagawaUtamaro.Fig. 4 – A morning scene,ukiyo print by ShunmanKubo, late eighteenthcentury.A man looks out of thewindow at the snowfall whilewomen prepare tea andperform other domestic