Kuniyoshi is best known for his warrior prints; his two great series are the 'Suikoden' (Tales from the Water-Margin) and the 'Taiheki' (Chronicles of the Great Peace), selections from which are illustrated in this booklet. His interest in warrior prints
Recognized as one of the most interesting and vibrant artists from the Edo period, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) is a major exponent of ukiyo-e in the early 1800s and trained under the master Utagawa Toyokuni. His fame is tied to the series of polychrome xylographs that illustrate the 108 heroes from the novel Suikoden (Brigands) , which became a bestseller in China and Japan in the late 1700s, promoting the imagery of a band of brigands who defend the people suppressed by injustice and government corruption. Violent, powerful, armed people with muscular bodies covered in tattoos that today inspire manga , anime , tattoo artists and illustrators across the world. Kuniyoshi affirmed the genre of warrior prints, but he was also interested in portraits of female beauties, kabuki actors, landscapes, children and ghosts, another greatly admired genre in Japan. Nonetheless, his name is above all associated with illusion, with shadows and Arcimboldo-like composite figures, figures within figures and parodies of stories and battles with animals, objects, sweets, food. His images are fantastical, baroque, rich in colour, of great detail, with imposing characters and dynamic actions. A versatile and intriguing figure for the variety of subjects, from female beauties and monsters to animals and heroes, and for the impressive technique that gave life to a school carried forth for generations.
The book introduces the print-series Taiheiki eiyū den or Heroic Biographies from the 'Tale of Grand Pacification', designed by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), who is considered the founder of the heroic genre in Japanese prints. The series is devoted to the final years of the sixteenth century civil wars and the key figure of the day, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536?–98). All fifty prints of the series are reproduced in full color. Each print is accompanied by a translation of the extensive texts incorporated into the composition and detailed historical and cultural commentaries. The introductory essay reviews the peculiarities of Kuniyoshi’s warrior images, explores the roots of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s popularity and discusses the texts in the prints as a source of information on the late medieval warriors’ outlook and battlefield practices.
Water Margin is well-known as one of the four greatest Chinese literary classics*. It tells the stories of a group of heroes, who stand for different classes of people daring to struggle against the corruption and oppression of the times. Altogether there are 105 men and three women among the notable characters in the Liangshan band. These stories take place at the end of the Northern Song period and describe vividly the people??s lives of love and hate, ties of friendship, loyalty and enmity, etc. This book relives the most stirring chapters in the novel which have become the subject of numerous dramas and films, and are the most popular episodes in Chinese fiction. They include Lin Chong killing the unworthy chief of Liangshan Marsh, Wu Song slaying a tiger with his bare fists and avenging injustices, and Song Jiang??s attacks on the Zhu Family Village. With artistic skills and wit, cartoonist Huang Qingrong presents vivid scenes in this drama of valour and brings alive the heroic legend.
"Expanding the canon of photographic history, Capturing Japan in Nineteenth Century New England Photography Collections focuses on six New Englanders, whose travel and photograph collecting influenced the flowering of Japonism in late nineteenth-century Boston. The book also explores the history of Japanese photography and its main themes. The first history of its kind, this study illuminates the ways photographs, seeming conveyors of fact, imprint mental images and suppositions on their viewers"--
In 1891 J. Murakami travelled from Japan, via San Francisco, to Vancouver Island and began working in and around Victoria. His occupation: creating permanent images on the skin of paying clients. From this early example of tattooing as work, Jamie Jelinski takes us from coast to coast with detours to the United States, England, and Japan as he traces the evolution of commercial tattooing in Canada over more than one hundred years. Needle Work offers insight into how tattoo artists navigated regulation, the types of spaces they worked in, and the dynamic relationship between the images they tattooed on customers and other forms of visual culture and artistic enterprise. Merging biographical narratives with an examination of tattooing’s place within wider society, Jelinski reveals how these commercial image makers bridged conventional gaps between cultural production and practical, for-profit work, thereby establishing tattooing as a legitimate career. Richly illustrated and drawing on archives, print media, and objects held in institutions and private collections across Canada and beyond, Needle Work provides a timely understanding of a vocation that is now familiar but whose intricate history has rarely been considered.
Thinking of getting a Japanese-style tattoo? Want to avoid a permanent mistake? Japanese Tattoos is an insider's look at the world of Japanese irezumi (tattoos). Japanese Tattoos explains the imagery featured in Japanese tattoos so that readers can avoid getting ink they don't understand or, worse, that they'll regret. This photo-heavy book will also trace the history of Japanese tattooing, putting the iconography and kanji symbols in their proper context so readers will be better informed as to what they mean and have a deeper understanding of irezumi. Tattoos featured will range from traditional tebori (hand-poked) and kanji tattoos to anime-inspired and modern works--as well as everything in between. For the first time, Japanese tattooing will be put together in a visually attractive, informative, and authoritative way. Along with the 350+ photos of tattoos, Japanese Tattoos will also feature interviews with Japanese tattoo artists on a variety of topics. What's more, there will be interviews with clients, who are typically overlooked in similar books, allowing them to discuss what their Japanese tattoos mean to them. Those who read this informative tattoo guide will be more knowledgeable about Japanese tattoos should they want to get inked or if they are simply interested in Japanese art and culture.
V.1. Historical perspectives. The Edo period, 1603-1868 / Harold Bolitho ; The Meiji to Taisho ; eras, 1868-1926 / Ann Waswo -- The history of Japanese prints -- The Edo period, 1603-1868. The roots of ukiyo-e: its beginnings to the mid-eighteenth century / Donald Jenkins ; Ukiyo-e book illustration / Yu-Ying Brown ; Shunga in the Edo period / Timon Screech ; The Kanbun Bijin: setting the stage for ukiyo-e bijinga / Kobayashi Tadashi ; Chinese woodblock prints and their influence on Japanese ukiyo-e / Hans Bjarne Thomsen ; The birth of the full-color print: Suzuki Harunobu and his age, early 1740s to early 1780s / David Waterhouse ; The Yoshiwara and ukiyo-e / Cecilia Segawa Seigle ; Mitate in ukiyo-e prints / Ellis Tinios ; Kabuki: its history as seen in ukiyo-e / Samuel L. Leiter ; Kitagawa Utamaro and his contemporaries, 1780-1804 / Julie Nelson Davis ; Sumo prints / Lawrence Bickford ; Kyōka and ukiyo-e print designers / John T. Carpenter ; The publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō and ukiyo-e publishing / Suzuki Toshiyuki ; Ukiyo-e meisho-e / Gary Hickey ; Diversification and further popularization of the full-colour woodblock print, c. 1804-68 / Ellis Tinios ; Surimono / Roger S. Keyes ; Nagasaki-e / Martha Chaiklin ; Kamigata-e: the prints of Osaka and Kyoto / Kitagawa Hiroko ; Shini-e / Melinda Takeuchi ; Warrior prints of the first half of the nineteenth century and the Suikoden / B.W. Robinson -- The Meiji era, 1868-1912. Woodblock prints of the Meiji era / Helen Merritt ; The maintenance of tradition in the face of contemporary demands: a reassessment of Meiji prints / Oikawa Shigeru ; Yokahama-e / Helen Merritt, Oikawa Shigeru ; Photography and ukiyo-e prints / Margarita Winkel ; Woodblock prints as a medium of reportage: the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars / Louise Virgin -- The late Meiji to Taishō eras, 1900s to 1926. Prints and modernity: developments in the early twentieth century / Kendall Brown ; The publisher Watanabe Shozoburo and the Shin-hanga movement: its beginnings until the 1930s / Abe Setsuko ; Creative print (Sosaku-hanga) magazines / Chiaki Ajioka -- Commerce and constraint in the world of publishing. The publishing trade / P.F. Kornicki ; Censorship and ukiyo-e prints / Sarah E. Thompson -- Materials and techniques: issues of conservation and collecting. Materials and techniques / Shiho Sasaki ; The care of Japanese prints / Pauline Webber ; Collecting ukiyo-e prints: issues of quality, condition and rarity / Chris Uhlenbeck ; The original versus the genuine / Chris Uhlenbeck -- The history of collecting Japanese prints. Ukiyo-e collecting in Japan / Oikawa Shigeru ; Japanese prints in Europe, 1860-1930 / Max Put ; Postwar ukiyo-e collecting in Europe / Robert Schaap ; Ukiyo-e print collecting in America / Julia Meech.V.2. Reference section -- Artist index -- Lineage charts -- Chronological/historical tables -- Map of former Japanese provinces and the Gokaido -- Signature facsimiles -- Censor seals -- Publisher seals -- Appendices. List of works released by Shin-hanga publisher Watanabe Shozaburo ; Pre-nishiki-e and Nishiki-e formats ; Elements of a print -- Concordance of artists' names (with Japanese characters).505.
Reproduces ukiyo-e prints from the incomparable collection of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Many tattoo connoisseurs consider the Japanese tradition to be the finest in the world for its detail, complexity, and compositional skill. Its style and subject matter are drawn from the visual treasure trove of Japanese popular culture, in particular the colour woodblock prints of the early nineteenth century known as ukiyo-e. This book tells the fascinating story of how ukiyo-e first inspired tattoo artists as the pictorial tradition of tattooing in Japan was just beginning. It explores the Japanese tattoo's evolving meanings, from symbol of devotion to punishment and even to crime, and reveals the tales behind specific motifs. With lush, colourful images of flowers blooming on the arm of a thief, sea monsters coiling across the back of a hero, and legendary warriors battling on the chests of actors, the tattoos in these Japanese prints can offer the same vivid inspiration today as they did two hundred years ago.