Kuchi-e

Kuchi-e (口絵) (lit. 'mouth pictures')^[1] are frontispieces of books, especially woodblock printed frontispieces for Japanese romance novels and literary magazines published from the 1890s to the 1910s.^[2]

They usually portrayed women and were bound to the book's spine or inserted into literary magazines to give readers a sense of what type of stories were to unfold. Most kuchi-e were woodblock prints in romance novels intended for a female audience. Some were lithographs, and some were inserted into other types of literature. The first mass-produced publication to regularly feature kuchi-e designs popular literary magazine Bungei Kurabu, with over 230 individual inserted from 1895 to 1914. Most measured either 22 cm × 30 cm (8.7 in × 11.8 in) or 14 cm × 20 cm (5.5 in × 7.9 in), the former being folded in thirds, and the latter being folded in half.^[3]

The general standard of kuchi-e prints is remarkably high. Made at a time of well developed woodblock printing techniques, it is thought the addition of these prints contributed to almost half the cost of production. Still, the genre is under-appreciated as an artfrom by the majority of print collectors. The standard text on the subject is Merritt and Yamada's Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints—Reflections of Meiji Culture (2000).