• Traditional Japanese woodcut tools produce a lasting and influential style.graffiti - street art image by Gina Smith from Fotolia.com
  
  Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh described the artistry of Japan as, "Simple as breathing; they draw a figure with a couple of strokes with such unfailing easiness as if it were as easy as buttoning one's waist coat." The tools of Ukiyo-e printmaking masters like Hokusai, Utamaro and Hiroshige are few. Yet, the fine, precision details these tools captured during the Edo period continue to inspire modern artists.
  
  

Wood Blocks

• Classical Japanese prints are the result of artists carving into the areas of cherrywood that respond well to different types of ink. Blocks for use with black sumi ink come from the center area of the tree's trunk. Carving into blocks made from the softer, outside areas of the cherrywood better suits artists using colored vegetable pigments and rice-paste inks.
  
  

Cutting Tools

• Japanese woodcut printing requires sharp chisels, knives and gouges. Printmakers use the hangi-toh knife, aisuki and soainomi bullnose chisel, along with V and U-shaped gouges. The hangi-toh tool forms outlines. A soainomi is a wood-smoothing tool. They finish woodblocks with an aisuki tool and customarily sharpen their tools with Japanese water stones.
  
  

Printing Baren

• A baren is a hand press that consists of a shin, an ategawa, and a takenokawa. Its shin is made of strands of a thin bamboo sheath, twisted into a long cord. You make this traditional Japanese printing tool by affixing ategawa, around a five-inch backing disk, to the shin with a bamboo sheath, called a takenokawa, They come in several varieties, such as the Murasaki baren and the Yoshida baren. This tool transfers ink onto washi, which is traditional Japanese printmaking paper.