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Four crafts, one sheet
No single person made a woodblock print. Production was split across four specialist roles, and the credit line on the sheet names at least two of them — artist and publisher — which is exactly the information you'll compare between listings in the shop.
01 · e-shi 絵師
The artist
Draws the design as a brush drawing on thin paper. Hokusai and Hiroshige never carved or printed a sheet themselves — their line was the beginning, not the end, of the object you buy.
02 · hori-shi 彫師
The carver
Pastes the drawing face-down on cherry wood and cuts away everything that is not a line, destroying the original in the process. One "key block" carries the outlines; a further block is carved for every color.
03 · suri-shi 摺師
The printer
Brushes water-based pigment onto each block and presses dampened washi paper against it by hand with a flat pad called a baren — once per color, in sequence. Registration notches (kentō) cut into every block keep the passes aligned to within a hair.
04 · hanmoto 版元
The publisher
Finances the whole operation, coordinates the three crafts, sells the sheets — and usually owns the blocks. Ownership of blocks is why editions continued long after everyone in the original workshop had died.
Bokashi, and why gradients matter here
The soft graduated skies you'll see across Hiroshige's Tōkaidō — deep blue fading to paper at the horizon — are bokashi: the printer wiping pigment into a gradient on the block by hand for every single impression. No two sheets are identical, which is one honest reason two listings of the same design can look, and cost, different. Our own section backgrounds borrow the effect; the originals did it first, ten thousand times, by hand.