Yoshitoshi - The Kitsune Owari Restaurant

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

Specialties of Restaurants in the Imperial City - The Kitsune Owari restaurant at Sanjūkken Canal. The name of this establishment can be translated as 'The Fox-Tail Restaurant'. The title of the series in the original Japanese seems to have a number of potential double meanings which are difficult to capture in English. kaiseki means 'meeting place', 'party', 'restaurant dinner', etc.; beppin is a somewhat vulgar word meaning 'beautiful woman'; and kurabe means 'competition' or 'auction'. So one plausible translation is 'Competition between beautiful women at restaurants'.

The prints in this series are collaborations between Yoshitoshi and various of his students, including:

• Utagawa Toshimasa (fl. ca. mid-1890s)
• Yamazaki Toshinobu (1857-1886)
• Arai Toshiyuki (1863-1941)

Date: 1878

Publisher: Kobayashi Tetsujirō

Condition: Good color and impression, some embossing. Backed on Edo-era paper.

Genre: Ukiyo-e

Medium: Woodblock Print

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