[Ibasen]Enjoy Ukiyo-e from Around the World Welcome to “Ukiyo-e Museum” in Metaverse Space

The sound of “ukiyo-e” evokes the historic art of traditional woodblock printing, a technique established in the Edo period that produced some of Japan’s most famous painters, including Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige.

But what kind of “Ukiyo-e Museum” would allow people all over the world to enjoy such works of art at the same time, transcending physical limitations?

Ibasen, a long-established shop of Edo fans and fans in Nihonbashi, Tokyo with a 400-year history dating back to the Edo period, has teamed up with Edoverse, a virtual space (metaverse) with an Edo theme, to open the Ukiyo-e Museum, where visitors can view ukiyo-e in a virtual space, in June The first phase of the Ukiyo-e Museum is an area for landscape paintings. As a first step, a landscape painting area is open to the public. Ukiyo-e loved by the common people of Edo can be viewed freely at any time from all over the world.

Ibasen was founded by Ibaya Kanzaemon, a merchant from Hamamatsu who came to Edo with Tokugawa Ieyasu. At the time of its founding, the company delivered bamboo and Japanese paper as an official merchant to the shogunate, and began using these materials to make fans in the mid-Edo period. He also became the publisher for popular artists such as Toyokuni Utagawa I, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, and Hiroshige Utagawa, and devised a method of printing ukiyoe pictures on fans, which became very popular in Edo.

Ukiyo-e prints have been exhibited not only in Japan, but also in famous museums overseas, including the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Van Gogh Museum, and continue to fascinate people around the world. Ibasen’s goal is to convey the humorous and stylish ukiyoe culture of the Edo period through the traditional “Edo Ukiyoe Fan,” which is made from a split piece of bamboo.

The Ukiyo-e Museum, which exhibits works by Ibasen’s publishers, opens as a satellite space of Edoverse, a metaverse that recreates the city of Edo. In this 3D museum built on the Internet, visitors can freely view Ukiyo-e works from the Edo period and talk to their avatars. Visitors can freely enter the museum at any time from their smartphones or PC terminals, making this a groundbreaking initiative that allows visitors from all over the world to fully enjoy the beautiful, three-dimensional space of Edo.

After passing through the noren (curtain), visitors are invited to pass through a hall with beautiful gold sliding doors and into an area lined with landscape paintings, accompanied by music that evokes the atmosphere of Edo (Tokyo). There, visitors can view one ukiyoe at a time, including “Okazaki Yahagi-no-hashi,” which depicts a place associated with Ieyasu, and “Hakone Kosuizu-zu,” which shows the ruggedness of the Hakone Pass, from Utagawa Hiroshige’s masterpiece “Tokaido Gojyosantsugu,” a series of paintings.

In the future, the exhibition will be expanded to include Kabuki, caricatures, samurai paintings, and shunga (spring paintings). Ukiyo-e and the Metaverse – Enjoy Japan’s world-class Ukiyo-e of Edo to your heart’s content in this unique space that combines the “tradition” loved by Edo children and the “trend” of Japanese culture in 2038. How about enjoying Japan’s world-famous “Ukiyo-e” of Edo to your heart’s content?

Ukiyo-e Museum official URL: https://ukiyoe.edoverse.io

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