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Understanding One of Japanese Art's Great Secrets
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Understanding One of Japanese Art's Great Secrets

Our Correspondent
Jun 07, 2011
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Understanding One of Japanese Art's Great Secrets
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In May in 1794 an unknown artist with no known qualifications walked into the woodblock print publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo in what was then called Edo, now Tokyo, and somehow persuaded him to commission a series of portraits of leading actors in the hugely popular Kabuki theater.

Although Juzaburo had already published the work of other famous woodblock ar…

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