Name: 【TED-Ed】Gyotaku: The ancient Japanese art of printing fish - K. Erica Dodge
Uploaded: 2013-06-13T14:04:18.000Z
Duration: 3 min 38 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

there's nothing that proves you caught a whopper,

and that's been true since the dawn of fishing.

long before photography could capture the moment,

Japanese fishermen invented their own way

Gyotaku is the ancient art of printing fish

There are several different stories about

needing a way to record the species and size

of the fish they caught over 100 years ago.

They told stories of great adventures at sea.

the fishermen would take a rubbing from these fish

they would paint the fish with non-toxic sumi-e ink

The first prints like this were for records only

and other embellishments onto the prints.

One famous nobleman, Lord Sakai, was an avid fisherman,

To do so, he commissioned a fisherman to print his catch.

Many prints hung in the palace during the Edo period.

After this period, Gyotaku was not as popular

Today, Gyotaku has become a popular art form,

And the prints are said to bring good luck to the fishermen.

But the art form is quite different than it used to be.

Most artists today learn on their own by trial and error.

the fish needs to be prepared for printing.

The indirect method begins with pasting moist fabric or paper

to put ink on the fabric or paper to produce the print.

and then gently presses the moist fabric or paper into the fish.

but both reveal dramatic images of the fish.