> But there's no true "original" since it was always a series of wood block prints. This isn't quite correct. There was an original painting on a special Japan

> But there's no true "original" since it was always a series of wood block prints. This isn't quite correct. There was an original painting on a special Japanese paper called "gampi". That original artwork is glued to the first wood block, so it gets destroyed in the process of carving. Early forms of the art stopped there and produced simple monochrome images. Later developments included hand painting certain sections of the image, and eventually the use of multiple blocks for multiple colors, often with gradients and even embossing and texturing.