Edo Meets Pop Culture: Reimagining Ukiyo-e with a Modern Manga and Anime Twist

Hokusai Meets Doraemon?

Fans of the Japanese anime and manga series Doraemon are familiar with the robot cat’s ability to travel into past ages. Publisher Hanzō has tapped into this reputation, recreating famous works by masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige that feature Doraemon and friends romping through Edo (now Tokyo). The expertly crafted prints are made using traditional techniques, providing an authenticity that complements their pop-culture value.

Japanese traditional woodblock prints, known as ukiyo-e, played an important role in the lives of residents of Edo. Appearing in the seventeenth century, they were the mass media of their day, conveying news and information, advertising the latest fads, and providing entertainment. Artists like Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858), and Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806) became masters of the form, creating scenes and portraits that are admired for their beauty and techniques to this day.

Producing ukiyo-e was a collaborative process that involved an army of nameless artisans, from painters who created original designs to carvers who chiseled images onto woodblocks to printers who applied layer after layer of ink to sheets of Japanese paper. The entire process was managed by publishers called hanmoto.

Workers produce ukiyo-e at a book publisher’s workshop in a scene from the series Ima yō mitate shinōkōshō shokunin by Utagawa Toyokuni Ⅲ. (Courtesy the Edo-Tokyo Museum Archives)

Today, only a handful of publishers still produce woodblock prints. One such modern hanmoto is Sakai Eiji, the president of Tokyo-based Hanzō. Following tradition, he teams up with talented painters, engravers, and printers to create stunning works that push the boundaries of tradition with their inclusion of modern manga and anime themes.

Hanzō President Sakai Eiji was in his twenties when he left his job at a trading company and started publishing ukiyo-e. (© Nippon.com)

Hanzo’s signature ukiyo-e series featuring characters from Doraemon are whimsical reinterpretations of classics. They have proven popular in Japan and abroad, with many of the company’s new releases, which typically come out at a pace of around once a year, selling out in short order.

From top: Katsushika Hokusai’s Mitsui Shop at Surugachō in Edo from his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. (Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art); Doraemon and friends inhabit the scene in Hanzō’s ukiyo-e. (Courtesy Hanzō; © Fujiko-Pro)

Modern Pop Culture Invades Edo

Along with its Doraemon-themed remakes of famed ukiyo-e works, Hanzō offers a lineup of stunning prints featuring iconic Japanese characters like Godzilla and Crayon Shinchan, as well as Darth Vader, Yoda, and other names from the Star Wars universe.

Entertainment firms fiercely guard their intellectual property, and Sakai says that collaborations typically involve long negotiations, particularly when it comes to recasting characters in the ukiyo-e medium. With the Star War series, Hanzō went back and forth with the Walt Disney Company for a year about using Japanese colors, garb, and other traditional elements. Sakai declares that “the fact that we were allowed to create original interpretations illustrates the high regard the ukiyo-e form enjoys.”

From top: Hiroshige’s Hara print from his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō. (Courtesy the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library); a remake of the print featuring characters from the manga and anime Crayon Shinchan. (Courtesy Hanzō; © Usui Yoshito/Futabasha/Shin-Ei Animation/TV Asahi/ADK 2025)

Hanzō has another tie-up with the popular smartphone game Fate/Grand Order. The game has amassed an army of dedicated younger players in Japan and is making inroads abroad with its gameplay and lineup of characters inspired by legendary figures from literature, history, and elsewhere.

From left: a woodblock print from the Holy Grail War Yūshōden series featuring servant Altria Pendragon; the heroic spirit of rider Ushiwakamaru. (Courtesy Hanzō; © Type-Moon/ FGO Project)

Traditional Craftsmanship

Sakai previously worked for another publisher but left to found Hanzō some 20 years ago with the purpose of preserving the techniques and traditions of woodblock printing first developed in the Edo period (1603–1868). The industry has suffered a steady decline in the number of skilled practitioners, and Sakai launched Hanzō to support modern-day ukiyo-e artisans in earning income from their skills while helping ensure the wonders of woodcut prints were passed down to future generations.

Through the 1980s, there was still a lucrative market for original woodblock prints by renowned artists. But at the start of the 1990s, demand fell off a cliff with the economic downturn sparked by the bursting of Japan’s asset market, forcing publishers to shift focus to reproducing famous works by past masters of the genre. The inexpensive replicas provided only a meager income, though, and many artisans hung up their tools without ever passing on their skills to apprentices.

Sakai joined the ukiyo-e publishing industry during this period. “I wasn’t drawn so much by the prints themselves,” he explains. “Rather, I wanted to preserve the traditional carving and printing techniques and to engage with younger people to let them know about the existence of these amazing skills.”

Woodblock prints have come to be valued primarily as works of art, but their roots lie firmly in the popular culture of Edo. Sakai sees their counterpart in modern forms of entertainment like manga and anime, and it was the hope of appealing to young people that inspired him to feature characters from today’s pop culture. Little did he expect that his endeavor would also pique the interest of fans far beyond Japan’s borders.

Hanzō held a hands-on ukiyo-e event at the Hotel Gracery in Shinjuku, Tokyo, a popular accommodation for overseas visitors. (© Nippon.com)

The event featured a demonstration by Tetsui Hirokazu, who is a second-generation woodblock printer. (© Nippon.com)

Producing woodblock prints is an expensive, time-consuming process. The basic materials are pricey, like the woodblocks themselves and the Japanese paper on which the designs are drawn and final images printed. Then there are the skilled carvers and printers, who might work for several weeks on a single piece. This limits the number of prints Hanzō can publish, with its current team of artisans able to create around five or six new works a year.

Still, Hanzō has received a steady stream of offers for tie-ups featuring copyrighted characters. Sakai says he wants to take advantage of as many of these opportunities as he can “to get more and more people interested in ukiyo-e.” However, the logistics involved along with the unpredictability of the publishing market make this a difficult goal, and along with its woodblock prints, Hanzō also creates ukiyo-e works that can be reproduced with high-resolution inkjet printers.

Hanzō uses woodblocks made from high-quality cherry wood. (© Nippon.com)

Limited edition neon ukiyo-e on fabric board, featuring Godzilla in Tokyo (left) and Osaka. (Courtesy Hanzō; TM, © Toho Co., Ltd.)

Another of Hanzō’s projects is the recreation of the cover of the 1905 first edition of French composer Claude Debussy’s La Mer, which is based on Hokusai’s iconic Great Wave off Kanagawa. Sakai kept the color scheme and other aspects of the original, creating a stunning work highlighting the skills of ukiyo-e artisans. It was released to coincide with Hokusai’s masterpiece being featured on Japan’s newest ¥1,000 banknote, with different versions of the work available for purchase.

La Mer: Orchestra Score, first print (left); original painting La Mer (Vagues Vertes Jade) with platinum leaf. (Courtesy Hanzō)

Sakai declares his commitment to bringing attention to ukiyo-e with new collaborations and drawing new fans by highlighting the techniques and beauty of the art style. “I want to create a buzz and get young people interested in learning the traditional methods of woodblock printing while current artisans are still able to pass along their skills.”

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Doraemon and other characters inhabit a reproduction of Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake from Hiroshige’s woodblock print series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Courtesy Hanzō; © Fujiko-Pro.)