Kuniyoshi to Yoshitoshi - Reviving the Warrior Class

Yoshitora, Attack on a Castle, 1864

Cultures turn to mythologies for reassurance - myths define us like daydreams, they show us how we might be. In England, (where we were recently reminded of all those knights in armour at Prime Minister Thatcher’s funeral) pageant remains the drag anchor to change: nostalgia, the potent enemy of social justice. In Japan of the nineteenth century, caught between the certainties of social acceleration and obligations to the past, similar entropy ensued. Like us here in England in the twenty-first century, many people looked to the past for symbols of moral certainty. Artists were quick to respond and there was a flowering of extraordinary artistic achievement by printmakers who were happy to provide images of an ordered society and symbols of digestible heroism.

The towering figure of musha-e (warrior prints) was Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the most successful of all Japanese woodblock artists.  Since the seventeenth century, the subject of woodblock prints had been primarily the women of the Yoshiwara, or actors of the kabuki stage. As the social fabric of Japan began to unravel in the early years of the nineteenth century, the burgeoning, urban middle class demanded more power, more presence and more fun, openly resenting the lazy decadence of the once (but no longer) powerful samurai class. Open defiance upset the social order, established for centuries by Hideyoshi in his reforms of the 1580’s - laws that protected the rights of the warrior class and effectively forbade social mobility. The samurai were no longer the fearless warlords and swordsmen that we imagine today. Hideyoshi created a domestic peace that was to last hundreds of years and the samurai swiftly became bureaucrats, writers, thinkers, dilettantes and even petty and noisome bandits. The relationship between nineteenth century samurai and their forbears is not dissimilar to the portly and feckless knights and peers of Great Britain today and the Black Prince of the middle ages.

Shuntei, Samurai with Giant Axe 1810's

It was against this backdrop that Kuniyoshi launched not only his groundbreaking series of full colour, single sheet warrior prints, The 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden in 1827 but a series of masterful triptychs depicting the heroic deeds of archaic warriors. These works found instant popularity among the urban middle class. Kuniyoshi timed his work perfectly; there had been attempts at musha-e before - Hokusai had begun the illustrations to the novelisation of the legend years previously, and Katsukawa Shuntei had produced several single sheet prints that accurately predict Kuniyoshi’s own great series by many years. Utagawa Kunisada had also made warrior prints which contained most of the elements of the great Suikoden series but to less applause. Artistically Kuniyoshi’s prints were more instantly impressive. The drawing is more fluid, the composition and design more confident and the vision bolder and more assured. The unaccountable success led swiftly to imitators among his colleagues and latterly his pupils to the extent that there is almost no original input into the genre in terms of style, design or competition until the astounding and original work of his last pupil, Yoshitoshi in the 1880’s. The question remains, especially to western audiences: who are these myriad warriors, what are their deeds and why were they so comprehensively revived?

The current show at the Toshidama Gallery, Kuniyoshi to Yoshitoshi - Reviving the Warrior Class, has twenty-five warrior prints, from an early Shuntei of the 1810’s to late Yoshitoshi in the 1880’s and a fine Toshihide of 1893. There is a distinct trend in subject matter, not just in the show but in the overall output of artists during the century. The earliest warrior prints are all romantic myth-making - Suikoden heroes and wild, magical beasts. As the century (and disaffection) takes hold  there is evidence of thinly disguised subversion, a deliberate (and dangerous) flouting of laws banning historic characters later than the sixteenth century. It is well known that Kuniyoshi was an admirer of the sixteenth century general Hideyoshi. The Tokugawa regime were particularly sensitive about this figure since whilst unifying Japan, he was deposed by the consolidation of power that led to the centuries long shogunate. Artists and writers risked severe penalties for making any reference to Hideyoshi, his crest, his campaigns or his generals. As early as his Suikoden series, Kuniyoshi was already disguising historic characters as Hideyoshi or his generals, a trend that continued throughout his career - even the gourd cartouche that Kuniyoshi adopted was homage to Hideyoshi’s thousand gourd standard. Kuniyoshi and his pupils revelled in direct and indirect prints of these historic events that can only be seen as anti-Tokugawa propaganda. In the current exhibition eight out of the twenty-four prints feature Hideyoshi or battles associated with him - a trend that gathered pace mid - century as the shogunate started to lose its grip on power.

These warrior prints can be seen as thinly disguised political dissent, something that would see trenchant revival in the latter part of the century after the Meiji Restoration and for similar reasons. Yoshitoshi,  his pupils (such as Toshihide) and Chikanobu were also sympathetic to the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 - an armed civil war, ostensibly fought on the principles of tradition against reform. Once again, prints of the era of the Grand Pacification as it came to be known, alluded to contemporary events and the musha-e again acted as a stand-in for less than covert criticism of the establishment.

Yoshitoshi, Description of the Punitive Campaign at Kagoshima, Satsuma Province 1877

Broadly speaking, whilst there seems to be a bewildering number of warriors, Daimyo, Shoguns, Emperors and Empresses, samurai and so on, the subject matter for print artists was limited to a few very specific sagas and collections of stories and incidents. Most of these were included into novels or histories which were published and widely circulated in Edo Japan and formed a compendium of history not dissimilar to any other culture. They fall into the following, general categories (which are by no means comprehensive):

Kuniyoshi, Empress Jingo-Kogo, 1843

Early History - The Suikoden (Archaic)
The 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden was originally a Chinese novel of the 14th century, recounting the exploits of a romantic group of bandits (from the 11th century) who protected the poor and downtrodden. It was adapted to the Japanese from 1805 and was a huge hit with the public, leading to Kuniyoshi’s immensely successful series of woodblock prints in 1827. Other figures from the archaic are often illustrated and Kuniyoshi was notable in portraying the Empress Jingo Kogo, the first of many depictions of female warriors in his career. Jingo was very much a warrior queen, divinely inspired to chastise the west - invading Korea as a consequence.

 Minamoto Yorimitsu (Raiko) (944 - 1021)
Raiko was a member of the great Minamoto clan, who prospered under the weak rule of the Emperor Murakami. Japan was still a warring state of clans and rival families barely held together by a weakened monarchy. Raiko was commissioned to rid the country of supernatural demons and powerful bandit chiefs - he is famous for his encounter with the Earth Spider and his battles with the demon chief Shuten-doji. He and his four heroic retainers are the subject of many myths and legends which also include fantastical tales about the companions. Yasamusa’s brother, the evil Kido Maru features in the show in a magnificent diptych by Yoshitoshi. Kintoki began as the boy hero and superhuman Kintaro and is the subject of dozens of ukiyo-e himself, including his boyhood, where he is traditionally pictured in red.

Kunichika, Tsuchigumo the Earth Spider, 1866

Kuniyoshi, Fight at Gojo Bridge 1848

Yoshitsune (1159 - 1189) and Benkei
Two of the most popular figures in ukiyo-e, Yoshitsune was the son of Minamoto Yoshitomo and an exile, coming to prominence as a fighting hero with his faithful retainer Benkei. Their famous fight at Gojo Bridge is the subject of countless prints as are many of their Robin Hood and Little John style exploits.

 
The Minamoto war against the Taira Clan and the destruction of the Taira (1180’s)
The two biggest clans in Japan inevitably struggled to gain ultimate power and eliminate the other. Fighting and skirmishes resulted in the epic sea battle at Dan-no-ura in 1185 where the Taira were defeated by the Minamoto under the command of Yoshitsune. There are many depictions of this great sea battle, most of them featuring the leaping figure of Yoshitsune and the mass suicide of the Taira clan and the young Emperor. Yoshitsune himself died in the power struggle that ensued at the battle of Koromogawa in 1189.

Yoshikazu, the Battle of Dan-no-Ura of 1185, 1850's

The Story of the Soga Brothers (12th century)
In the twelfth century two rival lords fell out and Lord Kudo killed Kawazu-Saburo who left two infant boys, Juro and Goro. Their mother remarried and they took their stepfather’s name Soga. At five, they vowed revenge on their father’s death and by maturity they were committed to carry out the plan. In 1192 on the occasion of a hunting party, they ambushed Kudo, slaying him in his tent. They were set upon by Kudo’s retainers who killed Juro and captured Goro. Despite the justice of their case, Goro was executed on the orders of the Shogun. Hiroshige’s series contains thirty (possibly thirty-six) illustrations of the story and he weaves details from the kabuki plays and other tellings of the events into his prints.

Toshihide, the Assassination of Kudo Suketsune by Soga Goro, 1880's

Yoshitsuya, Nobunaga and the Angry Sosetsu

Oda Nobunaga (1534 - 1582) and Hideyoshi (1536 - 1598)
Nobunaga was a Daimyo and warrior who initiated the eventual unification of Japan. His conquests (and cruelty) were legendary and he appears in numerous prints towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Kuniyoshi’s obsession with him, led to many prints being made which defied strict censorship of a politically dangerous subject. Nobunaga was assassinated by one of his generals (Akechi Mitsuhide) and swiftly avenged by the great Hideyoshi who continued the drive towards unification, establishing the basic codes and laws of Japan and instilling a love of culture into its daily life. He died of bubonic plague in 1598 and his line was in turn defeated by the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu whose family then ruled Japan until the 1860’s. Politically motivated prints inspired by these events came to dominate musha-e after 1864.

 
 

Toshihide, Hideyoshi Pursued by a Soldier of the Akechi, 1893

The Chushingura (1700 -1703)
The Chushingura is the literary and theatrical adaptation of the outstanding (and essentially true) story of honour, revenge and sacrifice which became the standard for Japanese moral certainty in the late Edo period. The dramas retell the straightforward story of the death of Enya Hangan, who in 1701 was forced to draw his sword in the Shogun’s palace by the goading  of the courtier Moronao. Hangan is obliged to commit suicide for the offence and his retainers become Ronin, leaderless samurai. They vow revenge and the play revolves around their plotting and preparation, culminating in the storming of Moronao’s house and his eventual assassination. The Chushingura is a body of work - plays and dramas for kabuki and the puppet theatre (bunraku), novels, manga and minor works - which, like the apocryphal gospels, embroider and enlarge upon the original story. The essential ingredients of an honourable man destroyed by an act of cowardice, the revenge by his loyal followers and their subsequent sacrifice chimed well with social unrest in the nineteenth century and many artists (notably Kuniyoshi in many series) made both musha-e and prints of theatrical adaptations, although confusingly, many prints use the approved pseudonyms of the characters rather than their historical names.

Kunisada, Act XI of The Chushingura - Night Attack, early 1930's

As can be seen, (and is so often the case with other cultures) the were many motivations at work behind the depiction of warriors and courageous deeds. Political subversion, inspiration, straightforward thrills and hagiography (official or otherwise) inform the depiction of these often wildly exaggerated heroes. The art of these exceptional Japanese printmakers reveals a wondrous journey of myth and legend and political analysis as well as a richly rewarding visual experience. In the west certainly - although in Japan these figures live on, however fantastically in manga and other media - many of these extraordinary and inspirational stories are tragically unknown. Appreciation of ukiyo-e is one way that we can still at this distance relive the world of the honourable samurai.

Onnagata - A Woman’s Manner

Kunisada, Iwai Kumesaburo III as Benten Kozo

Literally "woman’s manner" (onna kata), the use of male actors for female roles in kabuki theatre is one of the most confusing obstacles in viewing Japanese prints. In some prints the obvious theatricality; the exaggerated stage make-up and costume; the mie - the cross-eyed expression at the peak of a performance; betray the fact that we are looking at a representation of a performance; an impression of an impression if you like. In other more problematic prints, it is harder to determine whether we are looking at an historical scene or two lovers, or two men inhabiting unsettling roles.

Windmill Theatre Revudeville

Of course these confusions, these roles are all about sex, about desire and about how society and government regulate enjoyment and pleasure in the face of what it perceives as declining moral standards. The theatre, in all cultures, has been associated historically with loose morals, fornication and dissent. Governments have always tried to limit the extent of what it sees as dangerous subversion and theatres and producers have throughout time used increasingly creative ways to outwit the authorities. Since its inception in the early seventeenth century, kabuki theatre has been subject to extraordinary and to our eyes, bizarrely specific regulations. Whilst it seems arcane to us now, in the twenty first century, it is worth remembering that England for example was subject to similarly peculiar theatrical battles until only a few years ago. I’m thinking here of the office of the Lord Chamberlain who was obliged to allow the performance of nude revues at the Windmill Theatre in London so long as the actresses remained completely still throughout each of the many tableaux vivants. Another way the letter of the law was evaded, allowing the girl to move, thus satisfying the demands of the audience, was by moving the props rather than the girls. Ruses such as a technically motionless nude girl holding on to a spinning rope were used. Since the rope was moving rather than the girl, authorities allowed it, even though the girl's body was displayed in motion.

Hirosada onnagata portrait with silk headcloth

So it was throughout the history of kabuki. Commencing in 1603, kabuki was a combination of plots derived from noh theatre and the Japanese tradition of comic farce, performed mainly by prostitutes. The performances became wildly popular and led to more and more lewd subject matter (hiring a prostitute, for example, or the teahouse brothel) performed sometimes by all male and sometimes all female casts. As early as 1608, the military style government - the bakufu - attempted to restrict performances and, recognising that they were little more than a feint for organised prostitution, imposed a ban on female performers in 1629. By 1652, kabuki was an all male theatre with young boys taking the female roles… unfortunately, as is so often the case when heavy handed laws attempt to restrict popular pleasures, this led to a different and some would argue more immoral form of prostitution which one occasionally sees in shunga books of the period; so much so that there were gazettes issued rating the young male performers for their sexual appeal and availability. In the 1650’s, what had rapidly become a gay theatre was further restricted when mindful of the corruption of young boys, the bakufu decreed that only actors past their adolescence could perform and they were obliged to shave off the beautiful forelocks that boys wore before adulthood. This led to the tradition (and law) that onnagata actors should shave the fronts of their heads not only for performances but also when in public, replacing their missing hair with silk cloths, usually blue or purple and visible in many kabuki woodblock prints, (a sure giveaway when identifying the subject matter).

Kunichika, The Ghost of Koyo-hoshi

This very public and populist theatre was rampantly creative and it is possible to draw many parallels between kabuki and the early modern theatre of London during the Elizabethan period and later. Both used male actors to perform female roles and both theatres stressed the collaborative nature of the productions with notable actors and producers writing, changing and making demands on the roles that they were performing in order to show off their own particular theatrical skills. The interminable controversy over who wrote Shakespeare’s plays is a good example of this and chimes well with the complaints of Japan’s most important playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s that popular actors ignored the written texts and altered plots in order to present themselves in the best light to their fans and audiences, (forcing him to retreat to the more reliable medium of the puppet theatre).

Toyokuni I, Nakamura Utaemon IV as the Nursemaid Komori

In Early Modern English theatre the gender confusion was acknowledged and used to satirical ends. Playwrights also frequently made reference to such confusions in the plots and characters of the production; in many of Shakespeare's plays, for example Twelfth Night and As You Like It, this tension was developed to create a critique of gender and sexuality dependent upon the ironic awareness of the gender split between character and actor, cross-dressing, and confused identities. In Japanese kabuki no such knowingness exists… there is no conspiracy between author, actor and audience, and the intention of the onnagata actor was exactly to replicate the woman’s manner.

This woman’s manner was achieved by means of certain theatrical tricks to suggest a female kabuki role on stage: pull back and lower the shoulders, keep the knees together, cup the fingers into the palms of the hands and wear straw sandals shorter than the foot. All of these simple actions make the male body appear smaller in the eyes of the audience. Sophisticated and highly stylised gestures were rehearsed and handed down, which to our eyes now seem ridiculous and forced; however even in today’s kabuki theater it is held that a competent onnagata actor can portray the essence of a woman far better than a female could in the same role. Curiously, onnagata became the eventual arbiters of female taste and fashion, leading to an exaggerated form of dress and manners in the female population at large. This strange relationship of the genders reached its peak in the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps when the edo culture was at its most decadent and Japanese society at its most vulnerable. Sexual anxiety among the male population is perhaps mirrored in the great onnagata roles, called keisei (roughly castle topplers). These roles called for the actor to portray sexually adventurous and immoral prostitutes who destroyed families, ruined reputations and and brought down dynasties.

Kunisada, Yugiri and Izaemon

The other demanding role for the onnagata actor was the doomed lover. Many of the most popular plays of the nineteenth century were about often true stories of lovers from different classes - usually young men of good families falling in love with prostitutes (such as Yugiri and Izaemon, left) and ending with double suicides. These plays were deemed particularly unsuitable by the authorities and many were banned on account of a plague of copycat deaths.

How did artists identify difference in their portrayals of gender roles? If we compare the two portraits by Kunichika below, one of Onoe Kikugoro (male, on the left) in an onnagata role and one of Agemaki (female, to the right) we can see that artists were obliged to strike a balance between the intended verisimilitude of the performance and the obligation to represent the actor, his character and how he actually appeared. In the Kikugoro portrait we can see the signifiers of the onnagata role: the visible purple cloth that conceals the shaved forelock, the distinctive, manly facial features, absence of eyelashes and the sharp hairline indicating that a wig is being worn. In the female portrait of Agemaki, the features are more womanly and the gesture is more feminine. The hair line is meticulously graded to show real hair, the lips are more womanly and the features are slighter.

Kunichika, portrait of Agemaki

Kunichika, Onoe Kikugoro IV

The kabuki tradition retains an almost complete ban on female actors (as did the early days of Japanese cinema) despite the obvious and historic relaxation of laws or customs forbidding women on stage. The convention remains part of the Japanese tradition and barely differs from the time when these great images of female impersonators were produced for audiences whose need for certainty in sexual relations were not (ironically) as demanding as audiences today.

Kunichika, Sugoroku Board with famous Kabuki lovers

Impressions of Women - Ukiyo-e and Impressionism

Yoshimori,  53 Stations of the Tokaido 1872

It’s handy to think of national (or even nationalistic) characteristics in art; I’m thinking of books such as Pevsner's The Englishness of English Art from 1955 for example. The reality is that people talk to each other; artists, architects, producers and makers have a constant dialogue; dialogue informs the arts and enlivens the cultural scene. Nowhere is this more evident than in Europe and America in the latter half of the nineteenth century. What became the modern world - modernism, cubism, the American Scene, had its roots in the furious communication of ideas that spanned continents and cultures at that time. Of these exchanges, the Japanese ‘conversation’ - for want of a better word is perhaps one of the most important; the explosion of Japanese culture on the post 1860 cultural scene is even now yet to be fully acknowledged.

Mid-century Paris is generally considered to be the creative centre of the nineteenth century cultural milieu. Out of Paris emerged the artists Manet, Degas, Van Gogh and Cezanne who would become known as the Impressionists and the Post-impressionists and writers such as Zola, Huysmans and Baudelaire who would inspire Realists and Symbolists in literature and poetry. It is actually very hard to imagine the direction that any of the above names would have taken had they not been exposed to the newly exported culture of Edo Japan. Equally in London, Whistler’s debt to ukiyo-e is self evident as is the work of early American realists such as Bertha Lum, Helen Hyde and Frank Fletcher.

Whistler 1872

It is in portrayals of women and landscape that we see the primary Japanese influence on European artists. Maybe the first reliable account of Japanese art in Paris is from the printer Auguste Delatre who owned a copy of the Hokusai Manga in 1856. He showed it the same year to the artist Felix Braquemond who in turn purchased a copy which he then showed to the artists of his circle: Manet, Degas and Whistler. Shortly afterwards these artists formed a club - Societe du Jing-lar - dedicated to the study of Japanese art and culture.

Almost from this point we can see a huge shift in subject matter, composition, touch and design in the works of the decade’s leading painters. An obvious (and literal) example is Manet’s 1867 portrait of Emile Zola (below right). In this painting we see the writer’s study decorated with ukiyo-e, books and screens, and there are plenty of examples in French avante-garde art of the period where the new craze for Japonisme is evident in objects of Edo culture. The influence of Japanese art had a more profound effect than just the decoration of backgrounds or the outré wearing of kimonos however. The real changes were brought about by the ways of seeing and the craft of picture making.

Manet, Portrait of Zola 1867

European painting in the mid-century was freighted with a weary academicism: tired and cliched subject matter drawn from the mythology of Greece and Rome, stilted techniques that relied on trusted methods of underpainting and glazing that guaranteed a uniform surface; or else flattering portraiture that situated art at the service of a prosperous bourgeoisie. The revolution in painting that began in earnest with the exhibition of Manet’s Olympia in 1863 quickly became a movement that was principally concerned with the modern and the real. Hence the storm over Manet’s plain portrait of a well known prostitute in a dishevelled salon. Realism can be achieved by two approaches - subject matter and technique - hence the modernists' use of the everyday, and their search to find a method of painting and drawing that conveyed light, time, movement and surface as it appeared to be and not as it was thought to be. Of course the modern movement that began with these painters was just as much about style as it was about anything else - the desire for the young to be clearly different from the prevailing trend.

Kunisada, Kesa Gozen Washing 1855

Japanese art offered the proto-impressionists the techniques and the subject matter to achieve this. Hokusai developed the idea of the sketch book, the art of the everyday in the early part of the nineteenth century. Originally for his own use, the thousands of observational, quirky drawings in fifteen volumes were published in1814 (it is these that Manet and Braquemond would have seen). These had a huge influence on other ukiyo-e artists and an apparently casual style of composition developed in the work especially of Hiroshige. This was characterised by seemingly random foreground objects, off centre focal points, large areas of blank page and figures appearing only partially on the page. Crucially, this new way of looking allowed figures to be seen and not see, as if covertly observed. All of this led to an everyday realism - something more familiar in twentieth century photography.

Ingres, La Source 1820

If we look at the superb Kunisada print of a woman washing her hair (above), compare it with a European painting of the early part of the century (Ingres La Source 1820, right) and then with a Degas of the 1880’s (below) we see how far high art travelled in a short space of time and (even allowing the influence of photography) how enormous is the influence of ukiyo prints. Degas has dispensed with the classical motif, the all-over modeling, the idealised form, and the central composition. He has also removed himself from the scene. In the Ingres, the painter is visible through the direct gaze of the model. In the Degas as in the Kunisada,  the artist is remote. It is very striking how Japanese art not only gave European artists the validation to see the figure anew but also to depict the world as it is experienced.

Degas, Bather 1880's

It wasn’t only in realism - the everyday - that the Japanese seemed to the French to be so effortless and at ease. Japan offered artists the chance to escape reality in new ways. Japanese narrative is not confined to the same literal readings as say western history painting. Ukiyo-e is unboundaried in showing the passage of time, different states of mind or different localities on the same page. This particularly appealed to the Symbolist artists of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Artists such as Gauguin, Gustave Moureau and Odilon Redon recognised a liberation from Realism in ukiyo-e in colour, sensation and poetry. Redon’s Sita of 1893 (right) uses the rich colours of the Meiji print and the graphic techniques of ukiyo-e in order to realise his mystical vision. The shunga print from the Tale of the Genji (left) uses near identical colours and motifs to achieve the same end.

Yoshitoshi, Beauty and Plum Blossom 1878

Not enough serious research has been done to identify the route back - how much ongoing influence the art of the west had on Japanese artists after the trade agreements of the 1860’s. It is well known that Kuniyoshi was very influenced by Dutch engravings of Italian paintings in the 1830’s but there is a westernisation that pervades the work of the best of the Meiji artists which is a curious echo back of their own exported vision. In the prints of Yoshitoshi and Chikanobu one can determine the graphic style of contemporary European arts more strongly than that of the the Renaissance masters. Comparing the print of Plum Blossom by Yoshitoshi with say, a print by Walter Crane from 1879, there are tantalising similarities of style - the line of the drapery, the use of colour, the articulation of the petals of the flowers and the information embedded in the cartouche. There are numerous examples of British Victorian illustrators working in this style and Japanese artists working after Yoshitoshi, but little or no research beyond the known use of classical perspective by woodblock designers.

Walter Crane 1870's

We have then perhaps, a two way valve - traditional ukiyo-e swayed by western innovation, certainly in the work of artists such as Toyohiro and Kuniyoshi. The mass export of Japanese art to Europe and America in the 1860’s and the renewal of redundant painting styles as a consequence, and perhaps the repatriation of that innovation not just through the depiction of top hats and railway locomotives but also, through illustration, of a new graphic identity. The legacy of this intimate dialogue being the twentieth century work of designers such as Alphonse Mucha and the whole Art Nouveau style and its development of European Modernism.

Impressions of Women in Japanese Prints is open at the Toshidama Gallery from 1st February 2013 until 15th March 2013.

Toshidama Gallery 2013 Sale

Hiroshige, Snow at Yamanaka Village

 Toshidama Gallery is running its annual January sale as from today. The sale is open to Newsletter subscribers who enjoy a 30% discount on all of the prints in the exhibition. The show is something of an overview of ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century: there are three landscapes, including a superb and highly collectible Hiroshige snow scene; three terrific restaurant prints including a vibrant Kuniyoshi of The Carpenter Rokusaburo Wrestling a Giant Carp; three mythical figures which include Kyosai’s signature satire of the god Fudo reading a newspaper; and three prints of actors each by one of the three great actor portraitists of the nineteenth century, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi and Kunichika. Three warrior prints by Kuniyoshi are also represented along with four triptychs including a theatre scene by Kunisada which might have been printed yesterday.

The sale is a chance for those readers who have followed the blog this year to own museum quality prints at substantially less than market price and a handy introduction to the major genres of Japanese woodblock prints. Newsletter subscribers receive ten emails a year alerting them to a new show and including a minimum 10% discount voucher for the exhibition.

Kuniyoshi, 36 Fashionable Restaurants

Our new Kunichika site will start to be filled as the new year progresses and the eblogger site at the gallery is about to start a series of Kabuki Superstars; a series of downloadable pdf’s that identify the key heroes and villains of kabuki plays by their clothes, hair, gestures etc. We hope that this new series will be a helpful aid to anyone who wants a quick way to identify a play or a character seen in a print. It also gives a useful background to the major themes and characters of Japanese drama and mythology.

To subscribe to the Toshidama Gallery Newsletter, click here. The sale show runs until January 25th 2013 when it will be  followed by a major exhibition of Women in Japanese prints.

Toshidama Gallery would like to wish all our readers a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Kunichika, The Battle of Hakodate Castle

Hiroshige, Toyokuni, Kuniyoshi, Hirosada: Four Artists of the Ukiyo-e Scene

Toyokuni I, Minamoto Yorimitsu and the Shinten-no, 1810's

Toshidama Gallery is showing prints by four artists of the ukiyo-e scene, spanning the decades from 1810 to 1850. This first half of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary expansion in woodblock printing in Japan as it moved from a niche art form to a popular culture of unprecedented public appeal. This rapid growth was down to various factors, the foremost being the equally meteoric rise of the kabuki theatre both in Edo (Tokyo) and Osaka, the other centre of artistic activity.

Woodblock printing in Japan is a curious art form that still divides critics and connoisseurs. On the one hand, there is a tradition of arcane, hermetic and classical ukiyo-e during the eighteenth and seventeenth century in the works of Utamaro or Masonobu. These dry, attenuated and languorous visions of courtesans and playboys chime well with what we in the west recognise as great art in the traditions of the ancient world or even of the Renaissance. Their colours have faded, the lives and motivations of the artists are remote to us now and we know satisfyingly little of the cultural environment and commercial pressures on these artists. Some - I’m thinking here of Toshusai Sharaku (active 1794 - 1795) - may not even have existed, but been a nom-de-plume of another artist. For western connoisseurs, these artefacts from another world can be viewed in isolation, decontextualised and judged against similar works from wildly different cultural scenes. In this way their bleached vegetable colours and faded papers, their sometimes primitive lines and seemingly other world sexuality has a satisfying strangeness that marks them out as great art. But what of their brash, sometimes angry grandchildren, the great commercial woodblock prints of the Utagawa School and others of the nineteenth century? At what point do the bashful prints of what some might see as a primitive culture become unacceptably modern; vulgar bastards of a noble lineage?

Toyokuni I, Iwai Hanshiro V as Osome, 1813

The answer may lie with the great and undervalued genius of Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825). Toyokuni was the primary artist of his time to recognise the importance of a link between the theatre and the artist. As a consequence, the Utagawa School which he helped to found became a hugely successful commercial operation and the link between the two art forms was cemented much like the relationship today between film studios and advertising. As Dieter Wanczura points out: The comparison may be a bit daring. But the Utagawa School was something like the Andy Warhol Factory of Pop Art culture - at least in commercial terms. We don’t presume to denigrate the work of Andy Warhol because of its indelible association with popular culture nor its unashamed acknowledgement of the commercial, and yet for some reason there is a persistent denial among some critics of the genius and originality of much of the Utagawa School production.

This is to say that Toyokuni, despite his critics, is not only a visionary artist of great skill but also an individual able to see where great art can be most relevant and how best artists can play a significant role in the world around them.  Toyokuni has to be the most significant artist of nineteenth century Japan. His memorial was signed by twenty-nine students, among them the two greatest artists of the period: Utagawa Kunisada and Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Ando Hiroshige, perhaps the most popular Japanese artist of all time, was a pupil of the Utagawa School and Hirosada, the best of the Osaka School artists, was also a pupil of Kunisada and used the name Utagawa. This great, rich thread of artists flows directly from the vision, the style and acumen of Toyokuni. In the great apprentice tradition of the woodblock scene, artists not only adopted their teacher’s names in part or whole, they also adopted their style and draftsmanship. Early actor portraits by Kunisada are almost indistinguishable from Toyokuni’s as are the musha-e (warrior prints) of Kuniyoshi from his teacher’s earlier models.

Kuniyoshi, 108 Suikoden - Kinhyoshi Yorin, 1827

Toshidama Gallery are showing four prints by Toyokuni, two of actor portraits which nicely illustrate the direction that that theatre pieces would take in the proceeding decades and two of warrior prints that predict the mass popularity of these subjects following Kuniyoshi’s brilliant and groundbreaking series, The 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden, in the late 1820’s. It is interesting to compare the two pairs of prints that seem so very different; the static calm of the actors in mid pose, the delicacy of the rich fabrics and the frail stage props of paper umbrella and plant stand against the furious activity of the fight scenes; warriors with their grimacing features and bristling muscles; the energy of the figures seemingly uncontained by the confines of the margins. These are not the works or the creations of a hack illustrator or vulgarian, these prints are the product of an original and gifted artist, brimming with confidence and vision.

Toyokuni’s most celebrated pupil was undoubtedly Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Kuniyoshi, still not widely known to western audiences despite major exhibitions in recent years, is the creator of some of the most visually arresting and memorable images of nineteenth century Japan. Whilst his theatre prints in the early part of his career owe a great deal to his teacher, it was his series of warrior prints, The 108 Heroes of the Suikoden in the late 1820’s that established him as the foremost artist of the day. This groundbreaking series borrowed heavily from Toyokuni and Hokusai’s treatment of similar subjects but was the first series of full colour warrior prints ever produced in Japan. You can feel the young Kuniyoshi’s excitement and commitment in these works; there is a bravura and a daring in the compositions and his innovative use of elaborate tattoos on many of the figures started a craze for full body decoration that is endemic in Japan and other parts of the world today. The series was not only an artistic triumph but a huge commercial success. Thereafter Kuniyoshi created some of the great set piece historical and mythological triptychs of woodblock printing. These daring compositions of warrior heroes wrestling snakes, whales, gigantic bells, armies of demons and his portraits of folk heroes are astonishing works of art that have a significant resonance today in manga and gaming culture.

Kuniyoshi, Ghosts of the Taira Clan, 1840's

Kuniyoshi was an intellectual as well as a draftsman. In the 100 Poets Compared, we see a more considered side of the artist in their elaborate and thoughtful puns and when comparing his own contribution to the set with that of Hiroshige, we can also witness a humility that allowed both artists’ work to assume a similar style. There are five pieces by Kuniyoshi in the Toshidama exhibition which show the range of his achievement including a very fine piece of western style drawing, illustrating his curiosity and his great skill. We have also included one of his really great triptychs, The Ghosts of the Taira Clan Attacking Yoshitsune’s Ship in Daimotsu Bay in 1185, a piece which illustrates his enormous skills as a designer and the range of his inventive imagination. Here are the hordes of ghostly samurai, the demon skulls, the zombie like horde, set against mountainous waves and Yoshitsune’s storm tossed boat. It is these great original and visionary qualities that makes him an artist relevant today - we see his influence on the backs of every yakuza gangster as well as the countless manga re-tellings of mangled myths from Japanese history. He is now rightly seen a great artist and an influential one by any standards.

Hiroshige, Snow at Yamanaka Village near Fujikawa, 1855

It is difficult to see Hiroshige sometimes. His work is overshadowed by his first Tokaido Road series of prints. These have assumed the quality of a currency among print dealers and collectors and while there is much to delight and intrigue in these snapshots of daily life on the long road from Edo to Kyoto, nonetheless there is little doubt that these are on the whole over valued, the quality and provenance of much of his work is questionable and it tends to obscure his other great achievements. He came in his own lifetime to redefine the art of Japanese landscape; as an individual his contribution is great but he had relatively little influence outside his own circle. The shame about Hiroshige is that his prints of figures and figures in landscape remain hugely underrated. He was a sensitive observer and had a very fine and delicate touch. We are showing two prints from his very good and last Tokaido Road series sometimes called the Vertical Tokaido or Tat-e Tokaido. Snow at Yamanaka Village Near Fujikawa is a beautiful vision  of snow falling softly at night. There is in this print a calmness, a deadness of sound almost, that will be familiar to people in the Northern Hemisphere at least. It’s a fine contemplative piece, the silence of the snow, the stillness of the plum tree and the smallness of the figures, overwhelmed by the landscape are all masterful but so too are the two figure pieces in the show. I find his collaborative piece with Kunisada of Semimaru against the Post Station at Seki especially moving, as is his contribution to the Comparison of the Ogura One Hundred Poets.

Hirosada, Onoe Tamizo II, 1850

The odd one out I guess is the great and (in comparison to Hiroshige) hugely underrated Hirosada, an artist of the Osaka School and as I have written before, one of the finest portraitists of the nineteenth century. An artist who exploited his tendency to mannerism, Hirosada worked within his stylistic constraints with a sensitivity and brevity that it is hard to match anywhere in the nineteenth century. There is something of the medieval in these large head portraits, constrained as they are by the smaller chuban paper size, the consistency and scale of the pose and the similarity of actor subject. Yet Hirosada brings to each of these portraits an extraordinary and insightful eye. There is nothing flashy in his work - no sea monsters or grimacing mie on the faces of actors. His portraits have a calm almost zen like quality. They peer at us from what seems the distant past, imbued with both the characteristics of the actor and the often tragic role they are adopting. Notable in the Toshidama show is an unusual piece that steps out of the normal portrait genre and shows Nakamura Tamashichi as Wan Kyu, apparently painted onto a paper lantern, and yet Hirosada plays knowingly here with the space in the picture plane and in the illusion he has created. The actor’s gesture exceeds the space of the lantern and the lantern itself exceeds the space of the formal frame. We are left, as usual with this artist, wondering at the complexity of what we are seeing and lost in the depths of his very unique and structured vision.

Hirosada, Nakamura Tamashichi as Wan Kyu, 1848

Four artists then, two of whom are justly praised and two of whom were in danger of disappearing altogether. All of them associated with the great Utagawa School and all of them making a lasting impression not just on the ukiyo-e scene but also in the wider cultural context outside of Japan.

Four Artists of the Ukiyo-e Scene is at the Toshidama Gallery until 4th January 2012 when we will be having our January Sale.

Art of the Meiji - The Empire Strikes Back

Baido, Actors in a Kabuki Drama, 1890

Toshidama Gallery is currently showing an exhibition of twenty-two great woodblock prints of the Meiji period. The history of art appreciation - connoisseurship - is often a story of snobbery, misplaced enthusiasms and opinion, often by enthusiastic amateurs and via self-published tracts. The art of Japanese woodblock prints is no exception to this and like the art of so many other cultures, it is the opinions of western critics that determine not only the criteria of taste but also decide upon the relative values of individual artists and their work.

European appreciation of Japanese woodblock prints began at the beginning of the twentieth century. Prints were quite often used to wrap commercial exports such as ceramics and tableware and they gradually caught the attention of European artists and aesthetes - van Gogh, Manet and Gauguin to name a few. French sensibilities were oddly taken not with the sparse ‘classical’ prints of the eighteenth century that were shortly to become the favourites of the critics, but the later prints of Kunisada, Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige, all of which were copied by the impressionists at some point. The prints of the Meiji (maybe with the exception of  Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) and Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900) were however more or less ignored throughout the twentieth century. The nineteen nineties saw a new interest in the captivating and challenging work of the period with the publication of a series of high value art monographs for example: Time Present and Time Past: Images of a Forgotten Master, Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900) by Amy Riegle Newland, Yoshitoshi’s Strange Tales by John Stevenson, and Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints by Allen Hockley, and there are two major publications on Kunichika and Yoshitoshi due out in early 2013. Interest in Meiji woodblock prints is soaring and this is also being reflected in the salerooms.

Japan suffered a convulsive revolution in 1868 which saw the restoration of the monarchy, the abandonment of traditional, feudal society and its structures, and the enthusiastic pursuit of new technology and militarisation. It is hard to think of any comparable modern power that has had such an intense period of social change in its culture and history. It is hard to imagine how volatile the cities of Japan were at the time, not only during 1868 but also for the decade that preceded it which was characterised by constant skirmishes, punitive laws and minor insurrections, culminating in the bloody Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 which finally put an end to the divisions within the emergent nation state.

Yoshitoshi, Colonel Nozu Fighting with Kirino Noshiaki at Kagoshima, 1877

 1868 not only witnessed the changing political landscape but also major changes in the arts.  The first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by a few great Utagawa School artists; these huge and influential figures did not however live to see the new enlightened Japan. Kuniyoshi died in 1861, Hiroshige in 1858 and Kunisada in 1865. This led to the ascendancy of a new generation of artists, all of whom had been Utagawa students. Kunichika and Yoshitoshi  began their careers by continuing more or less in the tradition of their teachers - Kunisada and Kuniyoshi respectively. It was really only a few brief years though before technology and the invasion of foreign culture forced changes on their work that made it turn in a wholly recognisable and wholly modern direction.

Yoshitoshi, Kaidomaru and Yamaubu, 1873

Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) was the son of a merchant and a pupil of the great Kuniyoshi. Key to his development as an artist was Kuniyoshi’s emphasis on drawing from life; it is Yoshitoshi’s sensitive draughtsmanship and nuance of observation that makes him so outstanding as a Meiji era artist. His early work, perhaps done in response to the social upheavals in Japan at that time are lurid, sometimes cruel expositions of violence. He quickly matures and develops a drawing style that comes to influence many of the artists that were his contemporaries and students - Toshihide for example. It’s a hard thing to pin down; this hybrid mix of western drawing traditions and techniques and Japanese themes, colours and compositions. In the end, I suspect that drawing is the key to his mature style - this western tradition of observation and three dimensional space pulls Yoshitoshi’s work (despite himself) into the modern and lends it a familiar quality, perhaps illustrational, that was unique in Japanese art of the time. It is maybe only a couple of exercises in western style by Kuniyoshi that point the way to Yoshitoshi’s revolutionary technique but they are significant nevertheless. There is a quality about Tseng Ts’an in a Tree from The Twenty-four Chinese Paragons of Filial Duty that is wholly prescient of Meiji art and the route comes directly through that artist’s most important pupil.

Kunichika, 36 Good & Evil Beauties, 1873

The case of Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900) is quite different. One could be forgiven for not noticing the Meiji revolution in the first decades of Kunichika’s output. This is because he chose to concentrate fairly exclusively on the art of the kabuki theatre. This most traditional of dramatic arts changed little and the precedents for depicting kabuki actors were strictly laid down both by the actors and theatres but also the publishers of the prints. In Kunichika’s great print series of the 1870’s and 80’s - Thirty-six Good and Evil Beauties from 1876, for example - we see a striking change of direction. Women are pictured here in strong and ambitious roles and the drawing and range of subject matter are new and innovatory. By the end of the Meiji period Kunichika, in attempt to save both the fortunes of kabuki and his own career, had changed style to something still uniquely Japanese but startlingly new and daring. His great 100 print series of the actors Baiko and Ichikawa Danjuro IX are modern, startling and original in curious ways. There seems little western about them in terms of their drawing or their technique. They are imbued with a sparseness and awkwardness that really has no precedent in Japanese or European traditions. And yet these great prints seem uniquely of their time. Kunichika was perhaps less influential than Yoshitoshi although it is easy to see his hand in the Danjuro series of Toshihide and Jusoso Tadakiyo. Again with Kunichika’s late triptychs of the 1890’s we can admire a fairly unique vision. Sparse in format and deliberately and boldly shocking in composition, these are some of the great and innovatory pieces of their times.

Kuniteru, Panorama of the Northern Provinces, 1868

Elsewhere in the art scene of the Meiji there was even greater change. Yokohama had been a fishing village until Commodore Matthew Perry arrived there in 1854 with a fleet of American warships and a demand that Japan open its self imposed and centuries old seclusion to international trade. The international port of Yokohama was subsequently opened in 1859. European and American traders and their families set up homes and businesses in a district compound called Kannai surrounded by a moat. The city became the busy and vital link from Japan to the outside world and gave rise to a whole genre of woodblock prints called Yokohama-e. In some ways these prints characterise the ascent of the Meiji better than any other but they are curious and at times ugly things, though hugely collectible. They are notable by their awkward portrayals of foreigners, their business and their family lives. They are strangely akin to the inaccurate portrayals of exotic animals such as Kuniyoshi’s prints of elephants or satirical prints of mythical lands.

Yoshimori, Distant View of Yokohama and Kanagawa

 The Europeans are defined as ugly and ungainly and the artists struggled to find ways to depict innovations such as railway trains or metal clad steamers. An intriguing example of Yokohama art (although not strictly a Yokohama-e) is the quite wonderful Utagawa Yoshimori print from 1872, Distant View of Yokohama and Kanagawa. Instead of the clumsy figuration, Yoshimori (his name is a giveaway) has used Yoshitoshi’s western graphic style to depict a classical Madonna.  What’s fascinating here is that the artist would never have seen an Italian oil painting; his source of reference would have been a secondhand engraving. The figure contrasts alarmingly with a rendition of one of the very new telegraph poles and the distant view of the port. Once again we can clearly see the confusion of the Meiji artist in his attempt to be of his time but remaining unsettlingly anachronistic.

War provided the ailing woodblock print industry with a belated and much needed boost. In the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, woodblock prints were pretty well the only reportage available to the public and many were produced by artists who were immensely talented but had been reduced to decorating banners and ceramics since the waning of popularity for traditional subjects. The quality of the craftsmen remained consistently high and these triptych prints - panoramas of heroic deeds or victories - are some of the great prints of the age. These again are being re-evaluated (see Kiyochika, Artist of Meiji Japan by Henry Dewitt Smith) and though some collectors find the overtly jingoistic pieces vulgar, there is nonetheless much to admire in the best of these pieces and the print quality alone is outstanding.  The second war of the Meiji period, The Russo-Japanese war, had less impact on the now nearly extinct art of woodblock printing. In a mirror of the European wars of the coming century, Japanese reportage was covered more and more by on the spot photographers and journalists. Woodblock prints of the conflict are rare and consequently can fetch higher prices and they are a last, dim reminder of the ukiyo-e tradition. Influenced primarily by photography and western illustration, only in some of the battle pieces do we see an echo of the great days of the musha-e.

Kokunimasa, Battle of the Yalu River, 1904

How to summarise the art of the Meiji? It would be tempting to say that it was an art of uniform enthusiasm for a revolutionary age, perhaps like the art of communist Russia, but that isn’t the case. Most artists were slow to recognise change - if at all. Some artists like Yoshitoshi, seem not to have recognised the shifts in their own style, others like Kunichika were resistant, stubbornly staying in the art of the traditional theatre. Many woodblock prints of the early decades are openly critical or satirical, like the art of Kyosai; and some artists paid for the price of change in prison sentences and fines. Others attempted to adapt; but in the end the introduction of lithography, photography and newspapers and the collapse of the kabuki theatre and traditional values meant that the subject base of ukiyo-e had collapsed.  By the end of the century public thirst was for the new and the art of the woodblock effectively died out.

Art of the Meiji - Japanese Prints 1868 - 1904 is at Toshidama Gallery until 23rd November 2012.

Toyohara Kunichika - An Evaluation

The Actor Ichikawa Udanji as Ozawa Tomofusa 1882

 The  woodblock prints of Toyohara Kunichika have become more visible over recent years than at any time since his death in 1900. This is partly because of the  publication in 1999 of Amy Reigle Newland's outstanding book Time present and time past: Images of a forgotten master: Toyohara Kunichika 1835–1900. Exhibitions - notably a show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008 - have also contributed to the current appreciation of his work.

Kunichika is seen as the last of the great ukiyo-e artists of the nineteenth century - and the last of the great Utagawa School of artists with which  he has a direct link. His work is inextricably bound up with the changed fortunes of Japan in the period following the Meiji revolution of 1864 which coincides almost exactly with the start of his career as a printmaker. He is therefore an artist whose tradition is very much a part of shogunate Japan but whose life and livelihood was dominated by the developments of that country during the furious years of modernisation, culminating with two wars (the Sino- Japanese war and the Russo  Japanese war) immediately prior to and after his death in 1900. The question is, how do we judge the work of Kunichika outside of his fairly unique historical place; as an artist, and not merely the diarist of a dying age or the midwife to a new one?

Kunichika, 36 Good and Evil Beauties 1873

 Undoubtedly, Kunichika’s innovation as an artist lies with his late work. His early career is characterised by a debt to his teacher Kunisada, although in some of his early series of the 1860’s there is much to admire in the way that he manipulates the existing ukiyo-e tropes to his own, bolder style. I’m thinking here of perhaps lesser known works such as The First Mists of Spring from 1862, where the superficial debt to Kunisada is overwhelmed by a drawing style and feel for decoration which is distinctly modern. From what we know of his life - that it was at the very least unstable and difficult at times - the decades between 1870 and 1890 produced a great deal of hack work, seemingly hundreds of commercial triptychs lacking colour sensitivity or originality of design. I have written elsewhere about connections between Kunichika and Andy Warhol a century later, and it is in these mid career pot-boilers that they seem most alike.  The market is flooded with these poorly conceived pieces and one has to take a critical view on much of his commissioned theatre work of this period. There are however some series from the ’70’s and ’80’s which are among the very best Meiji era woodblock prints ever produced. Outstanding here are his series of 36 Good and Evil Beauties from 1876. In these works we can see a dynamism of content and graphic skill and a very real engagement with subject matter and content. The only serious rival to Kunichika at this time was Yoshitoshi, and some comparison of the two artists during the 1870’s is appropriate here. Both artists were modernisers at heart although they adopted at least the pose of a nostalgia for tradition. Their work in the 1870’s still betrays the influence of the artists to whom they were apprenticed - Kunisada and Kuniyoshi respectively. Yoshitoshi’s debt to Kuniyoshi is the greater. Although he was also to be a great innovator, in the 60’s and 70’s his work is visibly an extension of his now dead Utagawa forbear.

As we have seen, Kunichika too was working in the mode of Kunisada (if only by his adherence to actor portraits) but his work here in the mid 1870’s has a freshness, a richness and a sense of determination that Yoshitoshi at this time still lacks. The two artists in 1876 produced a series each of portraits of famous women. Kunichika in 36 Good and Evil Beauties, Yoshitoshi with Mirror of Beauties Past and Present. Superficially at least the two series look, not only in subject matter, as if they have been done in collaboration. But the Yoshitoshi remains overtly reverential to the work of Kuniyoshi… in the case of The Wife of Akechi Mitsuhide Holding a Bottle in the Rain (right), using Kuniyoshi’s drawing of the same subject as a near identical model. With Kunichika’s women there is a savagery and modernity in some of the depictions - a tension that holds the viewer somewhere between realism and style, that  is wholly new and wholly original.

Kunichika, Okubi-e 1869

 Kunichika did not invent the style for the okubi (large head) portrait - there are examples of this exaggerated three-quarter format in the work of Kunisada, especially the 1860 series Actors in Role and an untitled series from two years later But Kunichika's forays into this style are outstanding. His 1869 portraits of kabuki actors have a grotesque modernity that is even now startling. The designs are immediately arresting and these great swooping lines of the brush and the affected features bring to mind the work of Picasso seventy years later. Kunichika’s art at best is an art of boldness, he is most comfortable - as in the okubi-e - with the grand and the sparse, the broad considered gesture which in certain of his prints, The Actor Ichikawa Udanji as Ozawa Tomofusa (pictured at top) for example, seem to liberate the woodblock print from its unforgiving and hard edged impermeability into something wholly painterly, defying the materials and the tradition in which the image is embedded.

Kunichika, 100 Roles of Ichikawa Danjuro 1898

 As his career matured, his sensibility to changing social patterns matured with him; he is unique in responding first to the waning popularity of kabuki theatre and to the art of ukiyo-e itself. It is in Kunichika that the great innovations of Japanese art in the late nineteenth century lie. I’m thinking here of the great ‘cinematic’ triptychs of the 1890’s which boldly and deftly position a single three-quarter length figure against a terrifyingly empty print of three oban sheets. Or the huge 100 print series devoted to Baiko and Danjuro which boldly eschew beauty to design and which although shunned and derided by connoisseurs of the ukiyo-e scene, when viewed with a modern sensibility, reveal themselves to be triumphant and almost reckless exercises in design, drawing and composition.

Kunichika has undergone some rehabilitation in recent years but his evaluation as a modern master - to be seen alongside international contemporaries in Europe such as Cezanne, Gauguin, Klimt or the European Symbolists (rather than inappropriate comparisons to Utamaro or Hokusai)  is long overdue.

Toshidama Gallery is launching a site devoted to the complete series of Kunichika and to selected triptychs. The gallery is also showing Toyohara Kunichika: Series and Polyptychs until the 19th of October and many of the prints shown here are avai.