This marvelous evocation of traditional Japanese culture is the vision of the most prolific and influential woodblock artist of the Meiji period. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi began his masterpiece in 1885 and finished it shortly before his death, seven years later. His images depict characters from history and legend — courtesans, warriors, musicians, poets, and ordinary folk — in striking vignettes that unfold by the light of the moon. An eager public of Yoshitoshi's contemporaries snapped up new designs from the "moon series" as quickly as they appeared. The artist incorporated Western techniques into a traditional medium that was already losing ground to photography and lithography. Inspired by history and myth, his portraits of a vanishing world elevated woodblock art to its highest level before the genre's decline. Now, after a century of obscurity, Yoshitoshi's glorious illustrations are being rediscovered. This edition of his greatest work features reproductions of each image in full color and at nearly actual size, accompanied by insightful commentaries.
Tsuki Hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon) is a collection of large, moon-themed nishiki-e (multicolored woodblock prints) by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839−92). The 100 prints were published in batches by Akiyama Buemon between 1885 and 1892. They depict various aspects of the moon, drawing upon Japanese and Chinese anecdotes, historical events, and mythology, and relate to a wide range of subjects, including famous warriors, notable women, birds and animals, and goblins and ghosts.
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.
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.
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.
The first broad study of Japanese mandalas to appear in a Western language, this volume interprets mandalas as sanctified realms where identification between the human and the sacred occurs. The author investigates eighth- to seventeenth-century paintings from three traditions: Esoteric Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and the kami-worshipping (Shinto) tradition. It is generally recognized that many of these mandalas are connected with texts and images from India and the Himalayas. A pioneering theme of this study is that, in addition to the South Asian connections, certain paradigmatic Japanese mandalas reflect pre-Buddhist Chinese concepts, including geographical concepts. In convincing and lucid prose, ten Grotenhuis chronicles an intermingling of visual, doctrinal, ritual, and literary elements in these mandalas that has come to be seen as characteristic of the Japanese religious tradition as a whole. This beautifully illustrated work begins in the first millennium B.C.E. in China with an introduction to the Book of Documents and ends in present-day Japan at the sacred site of Kumano. Ten Grotenhuis focuses on the Diamond and Womb World mandalas of Esoteric Buddhist tradition, on the Taima mandala and other related mandalas from the Pure Land Buddhist tradition, and on mandalas associated with the kami-worshipping sites of Kasuga and Kumano. She identifies specific sacred places in Japan with sacred places in India and with Buddhist cosmic diagrams. Through these identifications, the realm of the buddhas is identified with the realms of the kami and of human beings, and Japanese geographical areas are identified with Buddhist sacred geography. Explaining why certain fundamental Japanese mandalas look the way they do and how certain visual forms came to embody the sacred, ten Grotenhuis presents works that show a complex mixture of Indian Buddhist elements, pre-Buddhist Chinese elements, Chinese Buddhist elements, and indigenous Japanese elements.
Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, perhaps the best-known of all 19th century ukiyo-e artists, created illustrations of mythic warriors and legendary battles throughout his career, including years spent documenting contemporaneous civil conflicts. This book collects 100 such prints by Yoshitoshi, often violent and bloody in nature, ranging in subject from the internecine decapitation wars of the 12th to 16th centuries to the uprising of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, the last stand of Japan's samurai class against the new imperial government. The selection of works is also limited to the triptych format, which gave ukiyo-e artists the freedom to express their phantasies as narratives in a kinetic, detailed image frame. All illustrations are reproduced in full color.