Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Warriors, monsters and cats.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi made dramatic woodblock prints of heroes, ghosts and giant skeletons – and loved cats.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi was born in 1797 or 1798 in Edo, present-day Tokyo, the son of a silk dyer. As a child he is said to have studied pattern books in his father's workshop. Around 1811 he became a pupil of Utagawa Toyokuni I, one of the leading woodblock artists of the time, but the early years were hard and for a long time he struggled to find commissions.
His breakthrough came around 1827 with a series of heroes from the Chinese novel Water Margin, in Japanese Suikoden. His muscular warriors with wild tattoos struck a chord with the public, and he was soon called the master of warrior prints. Among his best-known works is the triptych of Princess Takiyasha summoning a giant skeleton, made in the 1840s, in which an enormous skeleton leans in across three sheets. Impressions are held by the British Museum in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.
Kuniyoshi was a bold and inventive designer. He often used the triptych format to create broad, dramatic scenes and let figures burst the frame of the picture. He was influenced by Western images and experimented with perspective, shading and landscape. He also made humorous pictures, trick pictures in which a face is made up of many small people, and countless pictures of cats, which he loved and kept in large numbers.
During the Tenpō Reforms of the early 1840s the authorities banned pictures of actors and courtesans. Kuniyoshi responded with cunning: he had cats, fish and other animals play the roles, or hid satire in historical subjects. A picture of the warrior Minamoto no Raikō and the earth spider from 1843 was read by contemporaries as criticism of those in power, and he was questioned by the authorities. He died in 1861.
Kuniyoshi had many pupils, among them Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who carried his dramatic style into the Meiji era, and as a child Kawanabe Kyōsai also studied with him for a time. His Suikoden heroes helped make full-body tattoos popular in Japan. Today he is seen as a forerunner of manga, and his imaginary world of monsters, ghosts and warriors has attracted great new interest in both Japan and the West.