E-hon
Notable
Artist manuals or model books were treasured by art schools and became popular with the public. Although printed books were commonly considered as low-brow media, students of the leading artistic school of the Edo period, the Kanoh-ha school, produced their own edehon. This weaving together of elite artists with popular print culture coincides with the character of the eighteenth century when high and low culture converged. Ōoka Shunboku's of 1720 demonstrated characteristic styles of different artists. Illustrations which were either handpainted or stenciled appear in his of 1746, based on the successful Chinese Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden of 1679 which was released as a Japanese version,, in 1748.In 1765 polychrome woodblock printing was developed in Edo. The prints were called, 'brocade pictures', because of their similarity to color silk brocades. The first large-scale commercial book with full-color printing was in 1770, with artwork by ukiyo-e artists Katsukawa Shunshō and Ippitsusai Bunchō. The book featured realistic depictions of kabuki actors and was popular with theatergoers. Ukiyoe prints always centered around kabuki actors and courtesans and aimed to portray the lively atmosphere of Edo pleasure quarters. The same year saw the publication of Tachibana Minkō's which was colored with a stenciling technique known as. It depicted craftsmen at work at was immediately successful. Also published in 1770 was by Suzuki Harunobu which combined poetry with images of courtesans from the Yoshiwara brothel district.
File:富岳百景-Fugaku Hyakkei MET LC-JIB109 005.jpg|thumb|Pages from Hokusai's celebrated 100 Views of Mount Fuji
Under Tokugawa rule, the shogunate showed little initiative in promoting publishing. In 1603, it banned the import and reproduction of missionary works and by the early 1700s officials had also prohibited the publishing of current events, unauthorized calendars, erotics, depictions of the pleasure quarters and gossip about samurai. Only Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto, medical and poetic works were allowed. Censorship measures were unevenly enforced and largely ineffective. Despite these restrictions, a vibrant culture of print publishing continued to flourish, with publishers and readers finding ways to produce and circulate popular texts. This period thus saw the coexistence of official control and a thriving, dynamic literary marketplace. In 1790 the Tokugawa shogunate introduced severe censorship laws for publishers. They targeted "luxurious" works and for a while publishers ceased production of color woodblock-printed books.
The famous ukiyo-e artist Hokusai worked on dozens of early in his career. In 1814 the first volume of his was published which featured hundreds of drawings colored with gray and rose pink tones. Its popularity with multiple subsequent volumes appears to have influenced other publishers to use a simplified palette of subdued color. One of the finest ehon works is his 100 Views of Mount Fuji released in 1834–1835 in two volumes by Nishimuraya Yohachi with extremely fine carving by the workshop of Egawa Tomekichi and exquisite grey gradations. It is seen as the pinnacle of monochrome printing.Nara picture books, or, are lavishly handmade illustrated manuscripts which date from the mid-16th century to the late 17th-century. The contents of these manuscripts consists mostly of which are short narratives concerning war epics, folklore or Shinto and Buddhist legends. loosely refers to manuscripts that are either in book or scroll formats. The term is believed to emanate from illustrators who came from major Buddhist temples in and around the Nara region, such as Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji or the Kasuga-taisha. The manuscripts are decorated with ink, colour pigments, gold, as well as silver-decorated endleaves. When the amount of commissions from the nobility at these temples declined, the artists left for Kyoto to set up studios and took orders for work, similar to local painters.