An Immersive, ASMR-Style Look at Japanese Woodblock Printing

While not every Open Cul­ture read­er dreams of mov­ing to Japan and becom­ing a wood­block print­mak­er, it’s a safe bet that at least a few of you enter­tain just such a fan­ta­sy from time to time. David Bull, a British-Born Cana­di­an who got his first expo­sure to the art of ukiyo‑e in his late twen­ties, actu­al­ly did it. Though he’s been liv­ing in Japan and steadi­ly pur­su­ing his art there since 1986, only in recent years has he become known around the world. That’s thanks to his YouTube chan­nel, which we’ve fea­tured here sev­er­al times before. In the video above, one of his most pop­u­lar, he lets his view­ers expe­ri­ence print­mak­ing from his point of view, see­ing what he sees and even hear­ing what he hears.

Though Bull nor­mal­ly focus­es on the ear­ly stage carv­ing images into the blocks, here he spends about an hour on the final print­ing phase, going through a batch of eight sheets. As even a few min­utes’ view­ing reveals, this is a labor-inten­sive and thor­ough­ly ana­log process.

That impres­sion will be height­ened if you wear head­phones, since, as Bull explains, he shot the video while wear­ing in-ear micro­phones that record the sounds of the job just as he hears them. This par­tic­u­lar aspect of the pro­duc­tion required him to rise con­sid­er­ably ear­li­er than usu­al, in order to avoid the con­sid­er­able day­time noise on the streets of Tokyo right out­side his work­shop — and thus to more ful­ly sat­is­fy the large ASMR crowd.

The term ASMR, or “Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response,” refers to a set of pleas­ing sen­sa­tions trig­gered by cer­tain kinds of sound, often those pro­duced by soft-spo­ken indi­vid­u­als like Bull or the kind of repet­i­tive, method­i­cal tool work he does. Chances are, many if not most of the almost 950,000 views this video has racked up so far have come from ASMR enthu­si­asts less inter­est­ed in Japan­ese wood­block print­ing per se than in the gen­er­al aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence of watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to Japan­ese wood­block print­ing — at least at first. We all know how life can go: one day you’re check­ing out YouTube, just look­ing to relax, and the next you’re ensconced in Asakusa, hav­ing whol­ly devot­ed your­self to a three-and-a-half-mil­len­ni­um-year-old tra­di­tion­al art form.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

Enter a Dig­i­tal Archive of 213,000+ Beau­ti­ful Japan­ese Wood­block Prints

A Col­lec­tion of Hokusai’s Draw­ings Are Being Carved Onto Wood­blocks & Print­ed for the First Time Ever

Watch an Art Con­ser­va­tor Bring Clas­sic Paint­ings Back to Life in Intrigu­ing­ly Nar­rat­ed Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.