Today we have another edition of our "Famous Japanese Woodblock Print Artists" series. This time we tackle the question of "who was Utagawa Kuniyoshi?"
In our recent video on Kunisada, I mention the anecdote that Kuniyoshi was having a hard time early in his career he was thinking about giving up the print design business when he saw Kunisada, the most popular ukiyo-e artist of the day, with fine clothes, geishas and lots of money, and this motivated him to give it another try and we are so glad he did, because he left an incredible artistic legacy behind - one that we are going to explore today. As usual we'll start with some basic bio information and then dig into some of Kuniyoshi's amazing prints and print series.
Kuniyoshi was born in Edo in 1797. He was the son of a silk dyer. He assisted his father as a pattern designer, and this experience probably translated to his later use of rich color and textile patterns in his prints. He was interested in art at an early age, especially in prints of warriors. At the age of 14, his artistic talent was noticed by Toyokuni and he was invited to join Toyokuni's Utagawa School. Three years later, In 1814, Kuniyoshi left the Utagawa school and started out on his own.
I thought I'd start with a self portrait of Kuniyoshi that tell us a lot about his personality. The first thing you’ll notice is he’s got his back turned towards us and doesn’t show his face, I think that shows that he has a good sense of humor. Next, he’s wearing an amazing kimono with scenes from hell on it - he must have owned this in real life since it appears in several of his prints. And the one thing you can’t miss, is that there are lots of cats.
There is no doubt that Kuniyoshi is the number 1 cat lover among ukiyo-e artists. He had many, many cats in his studio. He would often work with a kitten snuggled in his kimono. When a cat died he’d have it sent to a nearby temple. He also kept a buddhist alter with the names of his dead cats in his home. You can see more about cats and ukiyo-e artists in our video on Good and Bad Cats.
Now let’s look at some of his prints and print series. Initially he struggled a bit when he left Toyokuni, even to the point where he had to sell used tatami mats, but he achieved his first commercial and artistic breakthrough in 1827 when he was commissioned to create a warrior series called, “The 108 Heroes of the Suikoden.”
The Suikoden series (also known as Tales of the water margin) is based upon a 14th century Chinese novel about the adventures of a band of 108 honorable bandits and rebels. These rebel warriors sought to protect poor and powerless people from injustice, very much like Robin Hood and his band of men. As we look at this violent warrior print, inspired by the stories from this Chinese novel - Kuniyoshi fills every part of the space with these dynamic aggressive poses and the rich background elements. The scenes are drawn with rough energetic lines. Kuniyoshi’s depiction of many of the characters with tattoos increased the popularity of tattoos among the lower working classes. Kuniyoshi went on to produce several series of the Suikoden, and it cemented his reputation as being a master of warrior or “musha-e” prints. Really powerful stuff.
But now, we’ll do a palette cleanse with a series of landscapes. This scene is painterly, the scenery is very realistic with a great understanding of perspective and an excellent use of space. Whereas every inch of the Suikoden prints were jam packed with texture and active overlapping shapes, here we see the opposite. Western style shadows, people are proportioned, and not stylized or exaggerated. It’s hard to believe the same artist did both of these series.
In 1845 Kuniyoshi created this well-known triptych print of Princess Takiyasha summoning a giant skeleton to intimidate Ôya Tarô Mitsukuni at her father’s ruined palace. Here we see the princess on the left reading from a book of spells while the giant skeleton she summoned threatens Mitsukuni. We can see some similarities here with Hokusai’s, “The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji” from 1831.
Next we’ll go back to warriors. This is from the series “Stories of the True Loyalty of the Faithful Samurai” from 1847. This print is much more refined than the 108 heroes of the suikoden. The backgrounds are blank except for the written text of the story, and see how the text perfectly wraps around the character and their active poses. These were the 47 samurai whose master was wrongly killed, they avenged his death and had to commit sepukku. Kuniyoshi did about 30 series related to this theme.
You’ll notice that he’s using his red Paulownia flower crest. You can quickly identify a Kuniyoshi print if you see this mark. Today this is the symbol of the Office of the Prime Minister of Japan.
To highlight Kuniyoshi’s creativity here in the 1840’s we have “Scribbling on the Storehouse Wall”. During this period in Japan pictures of Kabuki actors were banned because the authorities thought it led to loose morals - Kuniyoshi got around this by saying he was just copying graffiti that he saw on the wall, and not creating any new designs of actors. In any case, these actors could be clearly identified from the sketches.
Kuniyoshi was involved in several collaborative print series with other artists. Here are some prints from the series “100 Poets Compared” where we have a famous poetic verse at the top and then pictures of legendary and historical subjects. Kuniyoshi designed 51 prints, Hiroshige 35 prints, and Kunisada 14 prints for this series.
Another important collaborative series was the “53 Pairings Along the Tokaido Road” with prints again by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige and Kunisada. The series focused on scenes of traditions and historical characters related to each Station of the Tokaido. There are many great designs, but this is my favorite. The appearance of the Sea Monk, Umibozu, towering above the sailor Kawanaya Tokuzo.
Here’s a good place to show you Kuniyoshi’s famous triptych print of Miyamoto Musashi plunging his sword into the back of the giant whale from 1847. To learn more about this iconic print, watch my video on Unboxing the whale.
I realize we haven’t touched on Bijin-ga yet or beautiful women pictures, so here are several prints from this genre. This is from an 1843 series called Thirty-six Immortals of Poetry: Mirror of Ethics for Girls. Notice the cat playing in her kimono.
Next, a couple of prints from the series Sixteen Wonderful Considerations of Profit. For this print I read several descriptions online saying that the woman is hiding a puppy in her kimono, but we know Kuniyoshi, so that has to be a short-tailed cat.
From the 1852 series “Celebrated Products of Mountains and Seas” we have beautiful women in the foreground desiring or feeling something, and in the background we have inset images of traditional Japanese “products” such as giant octopus in this one below.
As we’ve seen, Kuniyoshi was extremely inventive and creative. I’ll finish here with a few prints to illustrate this. First Kuniyoshi did several prints of people made from people. Here we have the print titled “At first glance he looks very fierce, but he's really a nice person.”
He also created many popular print series but using animals instead of people. This below is from the "47 samurai story with bats".
And last we have “Cat Homophones” where he twists the bodies of cats to form words. Here is Namazu or catfish.
In 1856 Kuniyoshi was suffering from palsy and or gout, which caused his work to diminish. He died at his home at the age of 63. Kuniyoshi had over 70 students including Kyôsai, Yoshiiku, Yoshikata, Yoshimori, Yoshitora, and Yoshitoshi. Yoshitoshi one of Kuniyoshi’s most well-known students painted this beautiful image of him wearing his hell kimono, and turning towards us with a friendly face, a cat by his side.
I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about Utagawa Kuniyoshi with me and happy collecting.
To watch the video version of this blog article, see below: