It seems that Ukiyo-e is viewed as somehow different from the other genres of pre-modern Japanese art. I did not come up with the title of this presentation, rather it was a subject suggested by the symposium organizers. While nothing is said if other genre specialists speak on similar topics, this singling out of Ukiyo-e will only serve to strengthen my belief in art historians' sense of Ukiyo-e as unique. At first I wanted to reject this notion, and to state that it is a mistake to consider both Ukiyo-e paintings and Ukiyo-e prints as a special, separate realm. The question of "original" in terms of Ukiyo-e is the same question faced by other fields within the history of art. And yet, that doesn't mean that there aren't special aspects to Ukiyo-e. In fact, some special situations may be discovered in Ukiyo-e. That is one of the reasons that I have taken as my topic today the example provided by the organizers. The following phenomena can be considered "original" issues that are particularly easily spotted in Ukiyo-e.
  In the case of Ukiyo-e paintings the issue arises of copies made by artists and forgers of later generations. This occurs in both signed and unsigned works. This also becomes a question of whether or not the acquirer of that work was acting with malice aforethought. What is important, in any event, is a consideration of the date of production of the work. That will determine whether or not the work is authentic, and whether or not it can be placed within a group of works from a specific period. The opinions of the scholars involved in a survey of the Ukiyo-e paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (supported by the Kajima Foundation for the Arts) were divided on this point. However, this is not a problem unique to Ukiyo-e. What is more prevalent in Ukiyo-e painting than in other schools of painting is the fact that the genre involves many more works with signatures by unknown artists. Works with (seemingly) unprecedented signatures cannot be automatically considered forgeries. However, it is problematic if such works were made to look as though they were from a certain period of time. That is because this raises the issue of modern or contemporary works being classified as examples from the early Edo period. Careless judgments in such cases by art historians cannot be allowed, given the effect on pricing of such works. There are also cases in Ukiyo-e paintings where originally unsigned works are later given signatures, or their original signatures are revised. This issue, again, is not unique to Ukiyo-e, but it is indeed an issue that worries Ukiyo-e researchers.
  Regarding works by studio members, I will not address them here because they concern a fundamental issue regarding place of artistic production and thus should be considered separately.
  The issue regarding Ukiyo-e prints of first edition, reprints and copy editions can be considered the most difficult phenomenon of the genre. There are only a very few editions of Ukiyo-e prints that were made in the Edo period. Among the reprints, those works created soon after the first edition are handled in the same manner as the first edition, as long as they were not produced with malicious intent. There are detailed issues in such cases of whether or not there is an influence on the finish level of such prints if the dates between the first edition and the reprints are close and whether or not the reprint was officially sanctioned. In some cases, there are some works where all extant examples are reprints with no extant examples of their first editions. In recent years we have come to understand that different levels of works exist, with, for example, different color plates used on the same image. The question then arises, what degree of "originality" should be assigned to such prints. There are also works that exist only in the form of copies today for which we have no original prints. What means do we have for proving such works? Some famous works have several similar extant prints, and a major issue remains on how to rank such similar works.