Edo - the old name for Tokyo - was once one of the world’s biggest cities. It inspired a special type of urban art, such as this print of people at a party. “A Party in the Four Seasons Restaurant by the Sumida River, Edo” appeared in the 1780s, about three years before the French Revolution, at a time when Japan was largely cut off from the West. It is a Japanese woodblock print from an era that produced the artists Hokusai, Utamaro and (a little later) Hiroshige, famous for views of Mount Fuji, beautiful women and landscapes.

Making a woodblock print was a process involving several people. The artist - in this case Shumman - drew his final design on paper, which was then glued on to a wooden block, preferably made from cherry wood. At that point craftsmen took over, to cut the blocks and to ink and print them on mulberry paper. Colours were not mixed to produce shades as in western art but used as uniform blocks, strengthened or darkened by adjusting the amount of water or white pigment. For each colour the paper was aligned on to a separate block; great skill was needed to check the accuracy of the register and to make sure that all the complicated patterns on the figures’ clothes printed out precisely. Shumman specialised in showing elegantly dressed women, and used vivid colours: in this print they are strong reds, purples and blues with bright yellow for the woodwork. They are not meant to accurately reflect the colours of the real world.

The Four Seasons restaurant was very popular, famous for its highly original fish cuisine, attracting different ranks of society. In the restaurant garden, flowers of the four seasons were seen in bloom all year round. Shumman’s image is full of detail: inside the restaurant there are a man and eight women all in different poses on the reed matting; and you can also see musical instruments, drinks, plates of fish; outside lanterns, boats on the Sumida River (perhaps bringing more customers?) and a distant view of the city can be seen, including a lookout tower to watch for fires. All these elements are framed in an unusual way and cropped (in particular the trees) as if glimpsed from elsewhere in the restaurant, or from the outside. The composition is built on strong diagonals: low fences, the riverside, rows of warehouses and other buildings on the other side. The diagonals give the space great energy: Japanese prints are seldom static. To help create this effect, the artist has removed the sliding screens from the corner and side of the room facing the river, so we can see how it opens directly on to a verandah going all the way around the building.

Japanese art differs greatly in style and technique from western art of the same period. In the 19th century, after the American Commodore Perry forced his way into Japan in 1853-54 and opened it up to the West, the two began to converge. Newly discovered Japanese graphic art made an enormous impact on western artists, first in Paris and then across Europe and the United States.

From the 1850s prints like this were seized on by artists including Manet, Degas, Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec as a liberation from the conventions of western art. They admired their elegance of line, their strong, flat blocks of colour - and their new ideas on perspective and composition, ideas that were to greatly influence western artists even as recent as David Hockney. Artists collected Japanese art, fans and screens. Contemporary western artists shared with Shumman an interest in depicting modern life rather than history or mythology. For the artists of Edo Japan, their hedonistic culture was known as the Floating World and the art portraying it was called Ukiyo-e. For Europe in the 19th century, the world of the nightclub, the bar, the races and the ballet provided the occasion and we call the artists loosely Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

A painting by Renoir “The luncheon of the boating party” in the Phillips Collection, Washington (Bridgeman Art Library) makes a useful contrast with Shumman’s print. Renoir also uses diagonals, arranging his party-goers as if to invite us into the painting’s space, and interact with its web of conversations and glances. He crops bodies and space in a similar way to Shumman, creating a feeling of intimacy and activity.

Further information Rebecca Salter, Japanese Woodblock Printing (Aamp;C Black, 2001) for techniques Tadashi Kobayashi, Ukiyo-e, An Introduction to Japanese Woodblock Prints (Kodansha, 1997) for images and details of famous Japanese prints from the Floating World Mavis Pilbeam, Japan under the Shoguns (Evans Brothers, 1997) for history John Reeve, Living Arts of Japan (British Museum Press 1990) for the cultural background Allen J Grieco, The Meal (Scala 1992) in its Themes in Art series * The British Museum website includes access to its collections database, COMPASS with hundreds of images of Japanese art, including this print. www.thebritishmuseum.ac.ukcompass John Reeve is head of education at the British Museum

KEY STAGE 2

This print can be used as a stimulus to looking at spaces and how to present them in two dimensions, as well as at groups of people. You could take a dolls’ house and get the class to look into it from a variety of strange angles; look at advertisements and other photographs and discuss how they take up conventions of cropping and zooming into spaces. Shumman’s print is a cleverly contrived evocation of a space and the people in it, rather than a precise representation of it. How does it differ from a photograph?

Guided discussion: Which are the guests at this party? Who is the most important person here? What are the other people doing? Has the party started yet? What would this party smell like, sound like? How many different blocks do you think were needed in order to print all the colours separately? Can you find the artist’s signature?

Now try looking at the room you are in from different, odd angles and see how different pictures would look if their perspective was taken from on the floor in a corner - or looking through thewindow from outside. Have another look at the print and work out how the artist has achieved his effects.

Key stage 3 and above How does Shumman make us feel we are there, in the space, perhaps about to join the party? How does he tell us we are upstairs? How has he arranged the people to create a sense of animation - look particularly at the faces.

Why is there a divide in the middle of the picture? Does it bother you? Would either half work equally well on its own? How has he avoided problems in the design because of the central divide?

Look at the range of colours - what is missing? (Only from c.1830 with the availability of Prussian blue was there a blue that did not fade. Hokusai’s “Great Wave” dates from that year and illustrates the strength of the new blue.) What do you notice about the arrangement of the figures and their relative sizes? How do the diagonals work - would you ever draw a room like that?

In what ways would a photograph of this scene be different?

How are the conventions of Japanese prints like this different from western art of this period? What do they share with the Impressionists?