Kuniyoshi

This sumptuously produced monograph showcases the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the last great Japanese masters of ukiyo-e prints, illustrations, and paintings. Best known for his depictions of fierce samurai warriors in battle, Utagawa Kuniyoshi also produced landscapes, portraits of Kabuki actors, and images of mythical animals. His dynamic action scenes and fantastic creatures are recognized today as precursors of manga and anime. This dazzling volume by Matthi Forrer, one of the leading experts on ukiyo-e art, traces Kuniyoshi's entire career. Chapters look at the major aspects of Kuniyoshi's oeuvre; his book illustrations and portraits of fashionable women; his enormously popular series featuring actors, warriors, and landscapes; and the influence of Western art on his career. Meticulous, large-scale reproductions highlight the work's clear outlines, elegantly muted palette, and precise details--from electrifying depictions of a tiger, mid-pounce, and light-hearted interpretations of Chinese folktales, to the terrifying figures of samurai swordsmen and romantic winter landscapes. A Japanese-style binding and box complete this luxurious package that promises an endlessly absorbing journey into the life of Kuniyoshi during the latter days of Japan's Edo period.

Kuniyoshi was a master of the warrior woodblock print — and these 18th-century illustrations represent the pinnacle of his craft. Full-color portraits of renowned Japanese samurais pulse with movement, passion, and remarkably fine detail.

This is a collection of the work of Kuniyoshi's works that feature cats.

"A few short days has changed my status in this country, although I myself have not changed at all." On December 8, 1941, artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953) awoke to find himself branded an "enemy alien" by the U.S. government in the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. The historical crisis forced Kuniyoshi, an émigré Japanese with a distinguished career in American art, to rethink his pictorial strategies and to confront questions of loyalty, assimilation, national and racial identity that he had carefully avoided in his prewar art. As an immigrant who had proclaimed himself to be as "American as the next fellow," the realization of his now fractured and precarious status catalyzed the development of an emphatic and conscious identity construct that would underlie Kuniyoshi’s art and public image for the remainder of his life. Drawing on previously unexamined primary sources, Becoming American? is the first scholarly book in over two decades to offer an in-depth and critical analysis of Yasuo Kuniyoshi’s pivotal works, including his "anti-Japan" posters and radio broadcasts for U.S. propaganda, and his coded and increasingly enigmatic paintings, within their historical contexts. Through the prism of an identity crisis, the book examines Kuniyoshi’s imagery and writings as vital means for him to engage, albeit often reluctantly and ambivalently, in discussions about American democracy and ideals at a time when racial and national origins were grounds for mass incarceration and discrimination. It is also among the first scholarly studies to investigate the activities of Americans of Japanese descent outside the internment camps and the intense pressures with which they had to deal in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. As an art historical book, Becoming American? foregrounds broader historical debates of what constituted American art, a central preoccupation of Kuniyoshi’s artistic milieu. It illuminates the complicating factors of race, diasporas, and ideology in the construction of an American cultural identity. Timely and provocative, the book historicizes and elucidates the ways in which "minority" artists have been, and continue to be, both championed and marginalized for their cultural and ethnic "difference" within the twentieth-century American art canon.

This is a story of loyalty, obstinacy and unusual honor, carried out by 47 Samurai to avenge the death of his master. To avenge him, these Samurai carefully planned the attack for almost two years, even leading a common life of workers and traders, many of them living a lazy and idle life in order to outwit his enemies. Even though everyone should commit "seppuku" (ritual suicide) if the mission were to materialize, the Samurai went ahead and avenged their master. In this book were used prints and traditional Japanese Mino washi (Mino paper, originally created in the Nara period in the eighth century A.D.) scanned in high definition, with the purpose of recreating the atmosphere of Japanese high visual refinement. The 131 illustrations in this book are by master Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), one of the greatest of the art school of Japanese woodblock Ukiyo-e.

江戸の絵草紙屋にタイムスリップ。眺めて飾って細部を味わう60枚 絵草紙屋の店先で気に入った絵を選ぶように、1枚の絵をB5判の1ページ大で楽しむ趣向の「めでる国芳ブック」シリーズ。 第1弾の猫は、味わい深い美人画の猫、代表作の猫の当字、役者の似顔絵ほか、猫を描いためずらしい絵も収録。 「猫は、いわば人の掌の上で生きている小さな動物。人は、その掌の上の動物と、対等にやり合ったり、ときには下に敷かれたりしながら、この仲間との関係に喜びを感じるのである。猫のプライドの高さを味わい、時折みせるへまを、彼らのプライドを傷つけないよう口を塞ぎながら笑う。そして、そんな人と猫の独特の関係を絵の中でも堪能することこそ、国芳の描いた猫の味わい方だし、それこそが、国芳という画家と猫との関係を読み取ることでもあるだろう」。(本文より)

Recognized as one of the most interesting and vibrant artists from the Edo period, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) is a major exponent of ukiyo-e in the early 1800s and trained under the master Utagawa Toyokuni. His fame is tied to the series of polychrome xylographs that illustrate the 108 heroes from the novel Suikoden (Brigands) , which became a bestseller in China and Japan in the late 1700s, promoting the imagery of a band of brigands who defend the people suppressed by injustice and government corruption. Violent, powerful, armed people with muscular bodies covered in tattoos that today inspire manga , anime , tattoo artists and illustrators across the world. Kuniyoshi affirmed the genre of warrior prints, but he was also interested in portraits of female beauties, kabuki actors, landscapes, children and ghosts, another greatly admired genre in Japan. Nonetheless, his name is above all associated with illusion, with shadows and Arcimboldo-like composite figures, figures within figures and parodies of stories and battles with animals, objects, sweets, food. His images are fantastical, baroque, rich in colour, of great detail, with imposing characters and dynamic actions. A versatile and intriguing figure for the variety of subjects, from female beauties and monsters to animals and heroes, and for the impressive technique that gave life to a school carried forth for generations.