Utagawa Kunisada

Kunisada was born in 1786 in Honjo near Edo His father was a merchant, and a poet and owned a ferry. The family had enough money so he could take part in the arts and he studied painting. In the year 1800, at the age of fourteen, he became a student of Utagawa Toyokuni, the head of the famous Utagawa School and later took the artists name Kunisada. By 1813 he was considered to be the top Ukiyoe artist in Japan. Even more popular than Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi.

One of the reasons for this popularity is that he was the most prolific print designer with over 20,000 designs in his 60 year career, that includes books, prints and paintings.

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Kunisada's Famous Print Series

Kunisada continuously developed and adapted his style to match the demands, tastes and trends of the time. Actor prints or Yakusha-e accounted for 70% of his work. Below are 3 different print series for which he was well known.

Famous Print Series

Great Hit Plays

Actor Iwai Hanshirô V as Yaoya Oshichi, the ill-fated greengrocer's daughter, from the series Great Hit Plays. This is an early print series from 1815 and we can see the heavy influence of his master. As the years progressed, Kunisada's style changed quite a bit.

famous print series

The 53 Stations of the Tokaido

The series “The 53 Stations of the Tokaido“ from 1852 is probably the most successful woodblock print series ever published. It pairs kabuki portraits with the stations along the famous Tokaido Road. In this print on the right, we see actor: Ichikawa Ebizo V in the role of: Watashimori Tonbei. Many of the prints in this series can be combined to create diptychs. The prints are also rich in meaning, the actor, the role, the scenery and other graphical elements can be combined to provide additional meaning not apparent from first glance.

famous print series

Thirty-two Physiognomic Types in the Modern World

In the 1820s Kunisada published this bijin-ga series of different types of women. This print is titled “The In-demand Type. Compare this geisha image with the one of the greengrocer's daughter above, and you can see how quickly his drawing style evolved.

Featured Kunisada Prints - Available Now

As of this writing, these original Kunisada prints are available for purchase from our Gallery. We encourage you to compare our pricing with similar prints from other galleries. In addition we have over 100 other prints by ukiyo-e master Utagawa Kunisada.