Kawanabe Kyōsai
The last great ukiyo-e satirist.
Kawanabe Kyōsai was a wild and witty draughtsman of the Meiji era who made demons, skeletons and political satire.
Kawanabe Kyōsai was born in 1831 in Koga, north of Edo, and the family soon moved to Edo, present-day Tokyo. At the age of six he began studying with the woodblock artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Later he received a thorough training in the Kanō school, the official painting with Chinese roots, where he learned classical brush technique and the traditional subjects.
He broke away from the school's strict rules and took the name Kyōsai, whose first character means roughly mad. He liked to call himself a mad painter and was known for painting quickly, often at parties and with sake in his blood. His works range from devout Buddhist images to coarse jokes, caricatures and demons. Crows became one of his specialities, and a crow painting won him a prize at a national industrial exhibition in 1881.
Kyōsai lived through the upheaval in which Japan opened to the West and the shogunate was replaced by the Meiji Emperor. He made satirical pictures of the rapid modernisation, of foreigners and of the new rulers. In 1870 he was arrested for caricatures considered insulting to officials and spent some time in prison. The incident only made him more famous.
His subjects include the Hell Courtesan, Jigoku dayū, dancing skeletons and contests between demons. His drawing is free, powerful and full of movement, but behind it lies a profound knowledge of classical painting. The British architect Josiah Conder, who worked in Japan, became his pupil and later wrote a book about him. Through Conder and visitors such as the Frenchman Émile Guimet, Kyōsai became known in Europe in his own lifetime.
Kyōsai died in 1889. For a long time he was regarded in Japan as an odd figure between the old era and the new, but in recent decades he has received a great deal of attention, including through exhibitions in Japan and London. A museum devoted to him is located in Warabi near Tokyo. Today he is seen as the last great master of the humorous and fantastical branch of the ukiyo-e tradition.