Print in East Asia & the Arrival of Print in Europe

NCERT India and the Contemporary World-II | Chapter 5: Print Culture and the Modern World

Chapter Overview

Today, printed material surrounds us everywhere -- books, newspapers, journals, calendars, advertisements, and cinema posters. We often take this world of print for granted, forgetting that there was a time when nothing was printed and all knowledge was either memorised or handwritten. The history of print is, in fact, the history of how our modern world was shaped.

In this chapter, we trace the development of print culture^? from its origins in East Asia through its transformation in Europe and eventually its arrival in India. We examine how the spread of printing technology changed social lives, cultures, and the relationship between people and knowledge.

1. The First Printed Books

The earliest form of print technology emerged not in Europe, but in China, Japan, and Korea. This was a system of hand printing^? using woodblocks. From AD 594 onwards, Chinese craftsmen printed books by pressing paper (itself a Chinese invention) against the inked surface of carved woodblocks. Since only one side of the thin, porous sheet could be printed, the traditional Chinese book took the form of an accordion book^? -- folded and stitched along the side. Highly skilled artisans could reproduce calligraphy with remarkable accuracy using this method.

Urban Culture and the Diversification of Print in China

By the seventeenth century, a thriving urban culture in China transformed the uses of print far beyond official or scholarly purposes. Print was no longer restricted to scholar-officials. Merchants began using printed materials in everyday trade to collect commercial information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity, and the new readership showed a strong preference for fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies, and romantic plays.

Notably, wealthy women began to read extensively, and many women started publishing their own poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published their literary works, and courtesans wrote about their lives -- creating a vibrant new literary culture.

1.1 Print in Japan

Buddhist missionaries from China brought hand-printing technology to Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, was the Buddhist text Diamond Sutra, consisting of six sheets of text accompanied by woodcut illustrations. Printing soon extended to textiles, playing cards, and paper money.

In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books were inexpensive and plentiful. The printing of visual material led to particularly creative publishing practices in the late eighteenth century, especially in the flourishing urban circles of Edo (later known as Tokyo). Illustrated collections of paintings depicted a sophisticated urban life involving artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings.

Libraries and bookstores in Japan were packed with hand-printed material of extraordinary variety -- books covering topics from music and tea ceremonies to flower arrangements, cooking, calculations, etiquette, and famous places.

1.2 Print in Korea

Korea also made significant contributions to print history. The printing woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana^?, dating to the mid-thirteenth century, are a remarkable collection of Buddhist scriptures engraved on approximately 80,000 woodblocks. They were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2007.

Even more significant was the Jikji, one of the oldest surviving books printed with movable metal type, produced in the late fourteenth century. It contains essential features of Zen Buddhism and mentions about 150 monks from India, China, and Korea. The Jikji was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2001, marking an important technological shift in print culture from woodblock to movable type.

2. Print Comes to Europe

For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through the Silk Route. In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe by the same path. Paper enabled the production of manuscripts^? -- carefully handwritten texts produced by scribes.

The crucial link came in 1295, when Marco Polo returned to Italy after years of exploration in China. He brought knowledge of woodblock printing back to Europe. Italians soon began producing books with woodblocks, and the technology spread across the continent. However, luxury editions continued to be handwritten on expensive vellum^?, meant for aristocratic circles and wealthy monastic libraries that regarded printed books as cheap substitutes. Meanwhile, merchants and students at university towns eagerly purchased the more affordable printed copies.

Manuscripts were expensive, laborious to produce, fragile, and difficult to carry around or read easily. Their circulation remained limited. By the early fifteenth century, woodblock printing was being widely used across Europe for textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with brief texts. But there was a clear need for an even faster and cheaper method of reproducing texts.

2.1 Gutenberg and the Printing Press

Johann Gutenberg^? was born to a merchant family and grew up on a large agricultural estate in Strasbourg, Germany. From childhood, he had observed wine and olive presses in operation. Later in life, he mastered goldsmithing and learned to create lead moulds for making trinkets. Drawing on all this diverse knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technologies to create something revolutionary.

By 1448, Gutenberg had perfected his system. The first book he printed was the Gutenberg Bible^?. Approximately 180 copies were produced, and it took about three years to complete them. By the standards of the fifteenth century, this was astonishingly fast production.

Print Meets Handcraft

The new technology did not immediately displace traditional book-making. Early printed books were designed to closely resemble handwritten manuscripts in their appearance and layout. Metal letters imitated ornamental handwritten calligraphy. Borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and patterns, and illustrations were painted individually. In books produced for the wealthy, blank spaces were deliberately left on printed pages so that each purchaser could commission a painting school to add unique decorations. No two copies of the same book looked exactly alike -- a feature that elites prized.

The Print Revolution Begins

In the century between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were established in most European countries. German printers travelled to other nations, helping set up new presses. Book production boomed dramatically. The second half of the fifteenth century saw approximately 20 million copies of printed books flood European markets. By the sixteenth century, this number rose to about 200 million copies. This massive shift from hand printing to mechanical printing marked the beginning of what historians call the print revolution.