admin Japan started issuing featured passports, art by ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai to the citizens of Japan who applied for passport after February 4.
“Ukiyo-e” is a mass-produced Japanese woodblock prints genre that display everything from theater announcements and landscapes to sumo wrestlers and even salacious erotica.
The prints were not expensive to produce and distributed on large scale in Edo between the 17th and 19th centuries.
The “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” series will be featured in new passports which were created by Hokusai in the 19th century which features one of Japan’s well-known ukiyo-e prints, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”Under the Wave off Kanagawa” is one of Japan’s well-known prints.
The prints on the new passports will serve as background of the visa pages used for entry and exit stamps, whereas front remains the same. The 10-year passport contains fifty-four pages, excluding the front cover. Each of the 24, works that consist of “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” will be used as each work on the 48 pages of the back cover. Sixteen works will be used on 32 pages for the 5-year Japanese passport from the series.
The new Japan passport features the “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.” Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to redesign the passport four years back. They also considered cranes, cherry blossoms and festival scenes of Japanese motifs before choosing Hokusai’s work. The complicated design would not only strengthen counterfeit-prevention measures but also help introduce Japanese culture to the world said by the ministry. Japan possesses the most powerful passport in the world later comes Singapore and South Korea tied with Germany for third place.
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