The catalogue looks suspiciously like a coffee-table book, but it is much better than that. I'm sitting at the keyboard wondering what Kuniyoshi would have done with all the computer graphics software that is now available. I think he would have blown a vast crater much like the landmine print used on the cover of the catalogue. It's a bigger bang than Roy Lichtenstein and a more prolific designer than Andy Warhol even with all the factory doing his work for him.

I'm trying to imagine selling over 400,000 sheet prints. Marvellous. And no wonder. The five rooms at the Royal Academy devoted to his prints had strings of mesmerised visitors sidling quietly along as if on a conveyor belt. I hope you didn't have mushroom soup for lunch as the walls are immaculately presented with some heritage hue, or Warhol's Campbell's cream of mushroom soup colour. All the prints are at the correct height, all the frames are similar and precisely enough. The subdued lighting is just on the edge of dim but we owe it to Kuniyoshi not to bleach his block prints. The catalogue is almost perfect too. The slightly inferior prints are easily studied in the brightness of daylight from the catalogue and surprisingly only the very best quality original prints lose a shade in reproduction or overenlargement.

This is the case in the three sheet scene of Fight on the Roof of Horyu Tower. The intensity of this print is in a class of its own. When I went to Nara they certainly weren't behaving like this. I had some of the experience of the traditions. Bathing in hot spring waters on the pine clad mountain top in Kyushu. Sleeping on tatami. Climbing the endless steps to the hermit monk's cave. But the crush on the commuter train from Kyoto to Nara wasn't quite as arduous as this epic fight scene. Peace prevailed on the rooftops. The print is just such an improbable composition. Nine little birds flutter away into the graduated grainy azure sky. At the other gable end a blue pottery dragon peers down on the fighters on this man-made mount Fuji.

I only own one modest Japanese block print though it certainly fuelled my curiosity for the process and the culture. There is something about the organisation of the pictorial surface and the detail within each part. And of course there is the calligraphy and the heraldic symbols. While China exported so much through the Korean peninsula to Japan it seems that the Japanese re-energised the oft-repeated motifs and distilled a sake-like spirit, proof explosive in every printed proof.

The first print in the exhibition is not by Kuniyoshi. In his own subtle and innocuous way Utagawa Yoshiiku composes a memorial portrait of Kuniyoshi. How could such an austere figure as Kuniyoshi imagine and achieve such a wealth of exciting, imaginative and humourous prints. The first room starts the adrenalin running. Muscle bound wariors grapple in the confined spaces of the printing blocks, their rippling contours layered with tumbling swirls of tattoos and swathes of folded clothing. Each pattern competes to out-do the next; bird feathers, plaids, vile insect monsters, waves, fish scales and ever more tattoos themselves containing flowers, monsters, and waves. There is lot of blue ink about.

The Japanese warior Hayakawa Ayunosuke makes a fish-trap. This mountain of a man stems the flow of a trout river and nine fish leap about him. I want to give him a hand.

The second room displays some of the most spectacular triptychs. With all the printing going on it's a wonder that there were any trees left in the Japanese landscape. The third sheet of the Fight on the Roof of Horyu Tower displays the calm fine grain of the wood block in the sky area. Elsewhere it is mentioned that the characteristics of the zelkova or elm wood are exploited. Occasionally the curators mention the embossing effects in the hair. But it's just not possible to appreciate all this with the light levels and the reflections in the glazing. I looked from below and from either side searching for a hint of shadow and emboss. This exhibition is hard but very rewarding work. I avoided the audio-tour. I prefer to see and think for myself even if I have to read all the captions. The audio tour, I've only ever listened to the one at the Picasso exhibition, distracts from the work. I'm not easily brainwashed by such commentaries. Just let all the skill and beauty of the printed image invade on its own. Relax, enjoy. Silence is golden.

Kuniyoshi's graphic skills shout loudly from the modest proportions of the wood blocks. His is the only voice that matters. The intricacy and patience of the block carvers' chisels rasp pallidly in the background. The summer and winter growth rings in the wood grain absorb and impart the most delicately applied inks. Don't forget the hand made papers. And the 8,000 prints. The blocks for each colour, the drying racks, the production line of skilled printers applying ink, locating the blocks by the registration marks, and then the distribution and the sales. Eight thousand appreciative customers putting the prints up in their homes, inviting inquisitive neighbours round. Kneeling on the tatami mat. Offering frothy green tea. Laughing together at Kuniyoshi's brilliant work.

And more bravery. Sheets of it. Another triptych. The Soga brothers achieve their revenge at the base of Mount Fuji. Fighting bravely to take revenge on their father's murderer. Brave block cut lines representing sheets of rain. Is there nothing beyond Kuniyoshi's imagination, is there nothing that he would not try? Where did he find such consistent block carvers and block printers.

Sometimes my critical resolve weakens and I read how clever urban art is. And then I cycle over to the A1 and look at something hailed as the latest Banksy. And then I see the vertical triptych of Monk Mongaku does penance in Nachi waterfall. The composition is almost sarcastic yet it works. The force is chilling. Twenty-one days in icy water would be too lenient for the urban artists. I thumbed through the display copy of Banksy graffiti at Tate Modern just yesterday. Only by watching the murder trials from the galleries at The Old Bailey am I kept honest.

And so to the most startling print in the show. The warrior Morozumi Masakiyo kills himself in battle. It has everything and finds its way to the cover illustration of the catalogue. All that intricate calligraphy just for starters. And then the colours. I was getting just a tad bored with all the watery blue inks but now in the instant of his death a warrior . . . well I won't spoil it for you. You will just have to go and see it yourself.

I wonder if Kuniyoshi was a patient man? He could have a headful of swirling imaginary violence enough to give us mere mortals a haemorrhage. Yet down at the print works all this energy was finely transferred into imagery on delicate sheets of paper hardly stronger than a sheet of Plenty kitchen towel.

I have now reached a point where the exhibition and the catalogue differ. In the exhibition Lord Ko no Moroano and Lord Enya Hangan appear on separate sheets, in separate frames. Now in the gutter of the double-spread they are con-joined in the binding. That's alright but then reveals the weakness of the format of the catalogue for all the more important triptychs that also get poured away in the gutter. It's just irritating. The book could have been a landscape format that didn't need to break up the three sheet designs. The other evening on television I learnt about wabi sabi and now I think the pursuit of this elusive concept is clearer.

I have tried to also resist criticising the gallery attendants and the products in the shop. For such a thoroughly Japanese exhibition it would have been just that extra intense tang of wasabi, yes I mean wasabi not wabi sabi, for the attendants to have been Japanese in kimonos. That fragrant enticement of bursting cherry blossom would have simultaneously heightened and lightened the experience. Oh yes, and the Kuniyoshi shopping bag. Don't mention it.

Kuniyoshi took each minute effect in his stride. I've never seen anything like it. Try brazier ash, not once but twice. In another room we come upon beautiful women. I'm not so sure he was as accomplished with this task until Hatsuhana prays under a waterfall. And then a very fine triptych of Three women by an old plum tree at night. The Crawling Dragon Plum pulls together the composition as vigorously as a Roy Lichtenstein brush stroke. The theme of rain returns with Three women with umbrellas in a summer shower. They seem happy enough even though the spiky splashes bounce up off the ground. Keeping the grooves of the blocks clean must have been hell.

The room full of landscapes is almost disappointing but everything is saved by the treatment of the leaves in the river eddies; Courtier Ariwara no Narihira and his attendants admire autumn leaves on the Tatsuta river. It makes an autumn vigil on the banks of the Tatsuta river essential. Look out Nara, here we come.

And on he goes; smoke at night, lightning, and theatre. Teruuji at an abandoned temple features a bold peeling panel. This chaotic and colourful composition contrasts completely with a delicate and sombre Memorial portrait of the Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro VIII. A grey meadow of grasses and flowers is interspersed with the fine tracery of calligraphy gazed upon by the tragic actor.

In a humorous moment a swirling mass of tangled male figures becomes a Textile pattern of people. But this is nothing compared with the cheeky Sparrows impersonating a brothel scene. How did this get past the censors? By a whisker, or maybe a feather, though the censor had to resign. We are lucky to have the print. We are lucky to have all these amazing prints to view. Take three hours to take them all in. What do you think Tomoe?

© Brian Marsh, 24 March 2009 email initiative.cafe@btinternet.com