The vivid color and scenes from turmoil of 19th century Japan reflects the challenges of the new modern state of Japan. This collection of stunning woodblock prints by Yoshitoshi contains color artwork in a paperback format - perfect for coffee tables, waiting rooms, and anyone who needs more art in their world. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was born 1839 in the Shinbashi district in Edo, today known as Tokyo, to a wealthy merchant family. Yoshitoshi's prints were often depictions of bloody events, reflecting the state of Japanese society at the time. By the 1870s, Yoshitoshi's popularity had declined sharply, and he developed severe mental health issues in the face of extreme poverty. He produced work until his death in 1892 sporadically, but even a surge in the popularity of newspapers wasn't enough. By the time of his death, woodblock prints were no longer in demand.
This publication draws from the Ed Freis collection, which was assembled over the course of thirty years. It illustrates numerous works from Yoshitoshi s early career, including several prints that have to date not appeared in Western language catalogues."
Taisō Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) was fascinated by the supernatural, and some of his best work concerns ghosts, monsters, and charming animal transmutations. Yoshitoshi's strange tales presents two series (with full page illustrations) that focus on his depictions of the weird and magical world of the transformed. The first series is One Hundred Tales of Japan and China (Wakan hyaku monogatari, 1865) and it is based on a game in which people told short scary ghost tales in a darkened room, extinguishing a candle as each tale ended. New Forms of Thirty-six Strange Things (Shinken sanjūrokkaisen) of 1889-92 illustrates stories from Japan's rich heritage of legends in more serene and objective ways.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, a student of ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kuniyoshi, showed a predilection towards two types of subject in his early work: exceptionally bloody musha-e ("warror prints"), and supernatural images of demons and ghosts. Yoshitoshi maintained an interest in depicting the haunted realm of Japanese myth right up until his last major series, 36 Ghosts, in 1889 (two years before his death). Like all Yoshitoshi's art, these prints are now considered to be the work of ukiyo-e's last master practitioner. DEMONSe ^FROMe ^THEe ^HAUNTEDe ^WORLD, edited by Jack Hunter (who also edited the ground-breaking extreme ukiyo-e anthology "Dream Spectres"), collects and considers over 150 of Yoshitoshi's most striking and disturbing images of spectres, monsters and demons -- including the series 100 Ghost Stories, Heroic Beauty, and 36 Ghosts in their entirety -- presented in large-format and full-colour throughout. Third in a dynamic new series presenting the cutting edge of 19th century Japanese art.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, apprenticed to ukiyo-e master Kuniyoshi since his adolescence, was twenty years old when he first began to make sketches of severed heads and dismembered corpses. Soon he would start to incorporate this imagery into his work, and his vivid and bloody battle scenes quickly caught the public eye. All of Yoshitoshi's ukiyo-e series between 1863 and 1870 would include a quantity of his trademark scenes of carnage, in particular Eimei Nijuhasshuku (1866-68), a collaboration with fellow artist Ochiai Yoshiiku. Sometimes referred to as "The Sadistic Collection Of Blood", this series was an unashamed exercise in atrocity which took the concept of muzan-e ("cruelty prints") to new extremes of violence and gore. In 1868, Yoshitoshi was a first-hand witness to the Battle of Ueno, a cataclysmic clash which further inspired him to create new images of evisceration and decapitation. THEe ^EYEe ^OFe ^ATROCITY, edited by Jack Hunter (who also edited the ground-breaking extreme ukiyo-e anthology "Dream Spectres"), collects and considers over 80 of the most blood-drenched and disturbing artworks produced by Yoshitoshi during his career, presented in large-format and full-colour throughout. Second in a dynamic new series presenting the cutting edge of 19th century Japanese art.
Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) was the last creative genius of woodblock prints, his career spanning traditional Japan and the modernizing of Meiji. He is best known for designs of Japan's legendary past, for violent and bloody prints, and for prints of women. His finest images of women form a series entitled Fuzoku sanjuniso, "Thirty-two Aspects of Daily Life", which was issued in 1888. The series shows women of different social classes from 1789 to Yoshitoshi's present. Sensitively conceived and lavishly produced, the prints are vignettes of women caught in typical moments of their daily lives. The series has become a classic and fetches high prices from collectors. Woodblock prints had always been concerned with what was fashionable and up-to-date - "Thirty-two Aspects of Daily Life" was different in trying to capture the flavor of historical periods that had disappeared. It was original, too, in its attempt to individualize women in a genre that was usually highly stylized. This book presents "Thirty-two Aspects of Daily Life" in full color, explaining the subtleties of each design in text opposite the print. An illustrated introduction explores Yoshitoshi's often problematic relations with women, the lives of courtesans and geisha, and how the series was produced.