PRINTING AND PUBLISHING IN EAST ASIA THROUGH CIRCA 1600: AN EXTREMELY BRIEF SURVEY

• Published in: Mediaevalia (Binghamton, N.Y.) Vol. 41; pp. 129 - 162
• Main Author: Chia, Lucille
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Binghampton State University of New York Press 01.01.2020
• Subjects: 2nd century; 7th century; 8th century; Historical text analysis; Medieval literature; Prints and printmaking; Religion; Taoism; Writing; East Asia; China; Japan
• ISSN: 0361-946X; 2161-8046
• DOI: 10.1353/mdi.2020.0005

Buddhist texts, such as one from the fifth century, describe "devilsubduing seals" as well as impressions of the Buddha's image for devotional purposes. [...]the impressions were not necessarily made on silk or paper but on soft clay, sand, or even human skin.2 A different application of block printing in China was its use in dyeing textiles, for which we have brass blocks from the second century BCE and one anecdotal account describing a dye-resist method using woodblocks in the eighth century CE.3 Scholars have suggested that these different methods of making impressions on a variety of surfaces may have led to the development of block printing on paper. Next, a block-carver takes the appropriate knives and gouges to cut out the characters and images, as well as the frame around the leaf (folio), if there is one.7 Once the woodblock is carved, a water-based ink is applied, and a blank sheet of paper is pressed down and rubbed against the block to transfer the text onto the sheet. For monochromatic printing, usually the text and image(s) are all carved on one block; for polychromatic printing, different blocks (taoban ??) are used, each corresponding to a specific color, and the complete contents of a sheet requires printing off the entire set of blocks, a process that requires careful registration, which could be achieved in different ways, such as using the traditional Chinese printing table, by which the inked woodblock was held on one side of the table and the paper on the other side; the paper was then flipped onto the block to make the impression.8 In addition to wood, printing blocks were also made of bronze and used mainly for printing paper money and some official documents; we have a few extant examples from the Song, the Jurchen Jin (1127-1234), the Mongol Yuan (1279-1368), and the Ming (1368-1644) dynasties. [...]one of the great advantages of woodblock carving is its simplicity and portability.