Print in East Asia: the first printed books

Detail

Where print began — China, Japan, Korea

• The earliest print technology was hand printing. It grew in China, Japan and Korea — not in Europe.
• From AD 594, books in China were printed by rubbing paper against inked woodblocks. A block of wood was carved, ink was put on it, paper was pressed and rubbed on top.
• Paper itself was invented in China. So China had both the paper and the block — the two things print needs.
• The paper was thin and porous (it soaked up ink and the ink showed through). So only one side of the sheet could be printed.
• Because of this, the Chinese made the 'accordion book' — the printed sheet was folded down the middle and stitched at the side. The blank sides stayed hidden inside the fold.
• Craftsmen copied calligraphy (beautiful handwriting) onto the blocks with great accuracy. So a printed book still looked like a hand-written one.

Why the state printed so much

• The imperial state was the biggest producer of printed material in China.
• China had a huge bureaucracy (a large body of government officers). Officers were picked through the civil service examinations.
• The state printed the exam textbooks in very large numbers. Print here was a tool of government, not of business.
• From the sixteenth century the number of exam candidates went up, so the number of printed books went up with it.

The earliest dated printed book

• The Diamond Sutra of AD 868 — six sheets of text with woodcut illustrations — is the oldest printed book. (NCERT phrasing: "the oldest Chinese book".)
• It is a Chinese translation of the Sanskrit Vajracchedika-prajnaparamita-sutra, translated by Kumarajiva, and it carries a printed line naming Wang Jie as the one who had it made, dated 868 [4].
• It was found in 1907 by Sir M. Aurel Stein in the Dunhuang Caves, and is now in the British Library [4].
• Woodblock printing was already about 150 years old in China by then — the Diamond Sutra is important because it is the earliest printed book carrying an actual date [4].

Seventeenth century — print spreads beyond the state

• As urban culture grew in the seventeenth century, print use widened:
• Merchants used print to circulate trade information.
• Reading became leisure — people read fiction, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies and romantic plays for pleasure.

• Rich women began to read, and also to publish. Wives of scholar-officials wrote and published; courtesans wrote about their own lives.

• So print moved from exam and office use → to business, entertainment and women's writing.

Late nineteenth century — the machine arrives

• Western mechanical presses were imported in the late nineteenth century.
• Shanghai became the centre of the new print culture.
• The change was gradual — hand printing did not vanish at once; it slowly gave way to mechanical printing.

Japan

• Buddhist missionaries from China brought hand printing to Japan around AD 768–770.
• Printing in Japan was not only books. Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards and paper money.
• In late-eighteenth-century Edo (today's Tokyo), artists made ukiyo prints — 'pictures of the floating world', scenes of city life, entertainment and women.
• Kitagawa Utamaro (born 1753) is the key name. He was a printmaker and painter, one of the greatest of the ukiyo-e movement, famous for his composed portraits of female beauty [5].
• Britannica groups him with Hokusai and Hiroshige as the artists who defined the ukiyo-e style; the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the golden age of Japanese printmaking [5][6].
• His prints travelled to the West and influenced Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Western museums note the same influence reaching Mary Cassatt, whose first print series was inspired by such works [6].

Korea — woodblocks and metal type

• Tripitaka Koreana — the Buddhist scriptures carved on about 80,000 woodblocks in the mid-thirteenth century.
• UNESCO's own record puts the count at 81,258 wooden printing blocks, carved under the Goryeo (Koryo) dynasty, the edition completed in 1251, and stored at Haeinsa monastery [2].
• It is the only complete Buddhist canon still surviving on the Asian mainland, and is praised for accuracy and calligraphic beauty among some twenty versions of the Tripitaka [2].

• Entered the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007. The Haeinsa Janggyeong Panjeon — the buildings that store the blocks — is also a UNESCO World Heritage site [2][3].

• Jikji (late fourteenth century) — a text of Zen Buddhism, among the world's oldest existing books printed with movable metal type.

• Full title: Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol. Printed at Heungdeok-sa temple, Cheongju, in July 1377 [3].
• Entered the Memory of the World Register in 2001. Its surviving second volume is in the National Library of France.
• By the time the Gutenberg Bible was printed, at least six distinct fonts of metal type had already been created in Korea [2][3].

Note: NCERT says "about 80,000 woodblocks" for the Tripitaka Koreana; UNESCO's register gives the exact figure 81,258 [2]. Both are the same object — NCERT is rounding.

Prelims Hooks

• Hand printing from AD 594 in China — paper rubbed against inked woodblocks.
• Paper was invented in China; its thin, porous quality allowed printing on one side only.
• The 'accordion book' — folded in the middle, stitched at the side.
• Diamond Sutra, AD 868 — six sheets, woodcut illustrations — oldest printed book; found at Dunhuang by Aurel Stein in 1907, now in the British Library [4].
• Printing reached Japan c. AD 768–770 through Buddhist missionaries from China.
• Kitagawa Utamaro (b. 1753) — ukiyo prints of Edo; influenced Manet, Monet, Van Gogh.
• Tripitaka Koreana — about 80,000 woodblocks (UNESCO: 81,258), mid-13th century, completed 1251, at Haeinsa; Memory of the World 2007 [2].
• Jikji — printed 1377 at Heungdeok-sa, Cheongju; oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type; Memory of the World 2001; second volume in the National Library of France [3].
• China's biggest printer was the imperial state, printing civil service examination textbooks.
• Shanghai — hub of the new mechanical print culture after presses were imported in the late nineteenth century.

Mains Points

• Print did not begin in Europe. East Asia had working print technology from AD 594, and Korea had movable metal type by 1377 — decades before Gutenberg [3]. This breaks the idea that modern print culture is a purely European gift to the world.
• Who controls print decides what print does. In China the state was the main producer, so print first served examinations and administration, strengthening the bureaucracy. Only when urban merchant society grew in the seventeenth century did print shift to trade news, fiction and leisure — a useful contrast with Europe, where commercial publishers drove print from the start.
• Print and social change move together. The rise of leisure reading let rich women read and publish — scholar-officials' wives and courtesans became authors. Compare with India, where print later opened space for women's writing and for lower-caste and reformist voices.
• Technology transfer is two-way. Print entered Japan with Buddhist missionaries from China; centuries later Japanese ukiyo-e prints travelled west and reshaped European painting (Manet, Monet, Van Gogh; also Cassatt) [6], while Western mechanical presses came into China through Shanghai. Cultural flow in the print world ran in both directions.