Utagawa Kuniyoshi And Yoshiburo

Japanese woodblock prints transition into Ukiyo-e, which means “pictures of the floating world”, towards the end of the feudal era called the Edo period, 1603-1868 CE. Hishikawa Moronobu, 1618-1694, was the first great master that popularized this style of print in Japan, that eventually spread to the rest of the world. Suzuki Harunobu, 1725-1770, was the first to create and produce full (more than two or three) color prints, which led to more elaborate and colorful prints as the years progressed during this period. I always thought the artist was the only one that did all the work to create a print, but I was wrong after doing this research. To produce this art, it’s more like a collaboration because of the different tradesmen needed. It usually …show more content…
He was given the name, Kuniyoshi, by the master of the Utagawa school of ukiyo-e artists, Toyokuni I, by combining ‘Tokokuni” and “Yoshiburo” when he graduated in 1814. The reason I enjoy his work so much, is because he created over 5000 prints when he was alive. I believe that in order to produce this many prints he must have been working with several different publishers once. The prints ranged from animal, plant, acrobat, magician, landscape, comic, children, sumo wrestlers, and women prints, to more pornographic prints, to Chushingura (which is translated into Forty-Seven Ronin, these were made into a movie a few years ago), to the warrior triptychs and diptychs. These warrior triptychs and diptychs, contain some of my favorite prints created by Kuniyoshi. In 1853 he created around 20 prints that year, that in my opinion are some of the best ukiyo-e prints ever made. The amount of color and detail are stunning, and each print tells an amazing tale of that time period. One of the prints that I wish I could hang on my wall is translated into “Raiko severing the head of the Shuten-doji” (image 1) in June of 1853. The title of the print pretty much explains what is depicted, but, from what I see, there are five other warriors battling and slaying other various demons, as Raiko takes out the biggest demon. It is a rather dark print, not only because of the color, but because of all the dead villagers and demons that are depicted. The next print, that I wish I could hang on my wall, by Kuniyoshi was created a month later and is named “Tamatori-hime at the Dragon Palace”, but when it was reprinted later on the title was changing to “Lifelike Dolls in the Inner Temple at Asakusa”. This beautiful print (image 2) tells the story of a sea woman named Tamatori-hime,