This month’s theme is the pagoda

A pagoda is a tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Japan and other nations in Southeast Asia. Japanese pagodas, called tō, are distinctive tiered towers with multiple roofs that derive from Indian stupas and Chinese pagodas, serving as sacred repositories for Buddhist relics. Characterized by wooden construction, large roof overhangs, and an internal central pillar (shinbashira) to withstand earthquakes, these elegant structures are found at temples and shrines, symbolizing the elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and space through their five-story design. Like the stupa, pagodas were originally used as reliquaries, but in many cases ended up losing this function. Pagodas are quintessentially Buddhist and an important component of Japanese Buddhist temple compounds. Until the Kami and Buddhas Separation Act of 1868, a Shinto shrine was normally also a Buddhist temple and vice versa. The famous Itsukushima Shrine, for example, has one. After the Meiji Restoration the word tō, once used exclusively in a religious context, came to mean also “tower” in the western sense.

When the pagoda arrived in Japan together with Buddhism in the 6th century, it became one of the focal points of the early Japanese temples (or garan). In Japan it evolved in shape, size and function, finally losing its original role as a reliquary. They also became extremely common, while on the Asian continent it is rare. While they had great importance in the early years, by the time of the Edo period they were more likely just parts of the temple. They were mostly like the steeple of a church, saying “look here, there is something to see. The temples often had grand gates, which was another item that impressed people when they walked in. The temple itself was often dedicated to the worshipers and was not tall like the pagoda or the main gate into the temple compound.

(Previous Theme) This month’s theme is the prints of Tsuikoka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892)

Widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e style woodblock printing, Yoshitoshi is also regarded as one of the form’s greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period under the Shogun, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration (1868). Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing. By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was almost single-handedly struggling against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its feudal past to a modern future, he managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level.

This release has 3 rare prints from a little known Yoshitoshi series.  This series consists of illustrations for the “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. This epic historical novel tells the story of the three warring kingdoms in 2nd – 3rd century China. Written in the 15^th century, the book is part history and part legend. It details the lives of three leaders and their retainers at the time of the breakdown of the Han dynasty. The novel is among the most beloved works of literature in East Asia, and its literary influence in the region has been
compared to that of the works of Shakespeare on English literature. Over time, many woodblock artists have been drawn to the story.  Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Kunichika, and Kunisada III all did prints based on the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” Yoshitoshi was apprenticed to Kuniyoshi, so this may have influenced his decision to illustrate the story.

Yoshitoshi illustrations for the “Picture Book of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms” (Ehon tsuzoku Sangokushi) was released in 17 volumes in 1883-1884. As best I can tell, each volume had about 10 woodblock prints for illustration. The pages with text were actually made with movable type rather than from a wood block. There are also some sources that say the title may be “Heroes of the Three Kingdoms” (tsuzoku sangokushi). While this Chinese novel had great influence on the Japanese during the 1800s,its influence has even extended

to the present time as video games.  The Japanese movie entitled “Three Kingdoms” was released in 2020 based on this book. As the greatest woodblock print artist of the Meiji era, Yoshitoshi was known for his depictions of heroes and generals so it is natural that he would be interested in creating prints around the story.

(Previous Theme) This month’s theme is perhaps the most well-known Japanese woodblock print artist: Hokusai, Katsuyuki.

Hokusai was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as creator of the woodblock print series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” which includes the internationally iconic prints, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (aka “The Great Wave”) and “Fine Wind, Clear Morning” (aka “Red Fuji”). It took him 10 years to complete this series. His works had a significant influence on artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet during the wave of Japonisme that spread across Europe in the late 19th century. Hokusai was a prolific artist with about 30,000 different prints in all. But it was this series and in particular the Great Wave and Red Fuji which established Hokusai’s reputation.

One of the most popular prints of all time, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” has become synonymous with Japanese woodblock prints and is possibly the most reproduced image in the history of all art. The print shows a landscape composed of three elements: a stormy sea, three boats, and a mountain (Fuji) seen in the distance. The boats are fast barges that were used to transport live fish from the Izu and Bōsō peninsulas to markets in Edo Bay. However, it is the sea in the form of a dramatic wave which dominates the scene and threatens the fishermen in the smaller boats with its “claws” of foam. It is a print with drama as the wave is about to engulf the fisherman, with majesty at the force of nature, and with an amazing sense of movement as the boats strain to get through the wave.  Meanwhile, the subject of the print, Mt Fuji, is a small object in the distance overseeing this tableaux. The print is a reminder that man-made things are ephemeral, part of the floating world (or ukiyo-e), a Buddhist point of view about man’s temporary place in this world.

(Previous Theme) This month’s theme is the road from Tokyo to Kyoto and the series created by Hiroshige that made the road famous.

In the early 1600s, after years of civil war, the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu established himself as the military dictator of feudal Japan. For roughly 250 years, the emperor continued to rule as a figurehead but real power was with the Shogun.  Tokugawa’s shogunate continued through his heirs until 1868 when the emperor emerged as an actual ruler in the Meiji restoration. As a way to quickly move his army around the main island of Honshu, the Shogun directed the construction of 5 permanent roads.  The most important of these roads was the one that connected the Shogun’s home in Tokyo (then called Edo) with the Emperor’s home in Kyoto. This road was named the Tokaido (which means Eastern Coast Road). While these roads were created in the 1600s for military defense, by the first half of the 1800s, they were also widely used for commercial travel and tourism.  The stability of the shogunate allowed for the creation of a Japanese middle class.  By the 1800s, this new middle class had the resources to travel for religious or family reasons.  Making pilgrimages and visits to temples and shrines became a popular pasttime for the Japanese.  Although the fuedal lords (daimyos and higher) traveled on horseback, most of the travelers went on foot carrying what they needed for their journey. As more people traveled, stopping points known as stations allowed the pilgrims and travellers to seek rest or refuge. Fifty-three such stations developed for the trip on the Tokaido. Some were known for their beauty, some for the noodle or pastry shops, some for the inns or overnight rest areas, and some for horse stables. Today, the Tokaido corridor is the most heavily travelled transportation corridor in Japan with most ot the original road now paved over or re-routed. However, a few remants of the original road can still be found.

The woodblock print artist Hiroshige Utagawa (also known as Hiroshige Ando) began his apprenticeship in 1811 under the ukiyo-e painter Utagawa Toyohiro.  Hiroshige was about a generation behind the famous Hokusai Katsuyuki (1760–1849).  Hokusai solidified his fame with the publication of his series “36 Views of Fuji” in 1832 which include the most famous woodblock print (at least by today’s standards) – the Great Wave off Kanagawa.  This was the same year that Hiroshige journeyed from Tokyo to Kyoto as part of a delegation making a symbolic presentation of horses to the royal court. When he returned home, he immediately began work on his own series “Fifty-three Stations of Tokaido”.  The series was a tremendous success and established Hiroshige as the most prominent and successful printmaker of his era. He and his publisher were relative unknowns before the series was created.  Part of its appeal to the Japanese people was that it not only showed the landsacpe, but the travellers as well.  It also had views of people in bad weather or struggling to in their journey. The number of prints in the series was actually 55 since it included one for the begginning at the Nihon Bridge and one for the end at the imperial capital. Knowing that he was on to something, Hiroshige continued to make series with this same name.  The original series was a standared oban size (about 10”x16”) in a landscape orientation.

Later series would have different sizes or have a portrait orientation.  There is even one series which shows pretty women (bijin) at each station, but little of their surroundings.  Hiroshige eventually did 30 different series on the stations of the Tokaido. The most famous is his first one which is known as the Hoeido edition.  Other editions which are also well known and sought after include the Gyosho, Kichizo, Kyoka, and Reisho. Hiroshige went on to create prints about other roads including the series “The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō”.  With Hiroshige’s successful series on the Tokaido, many other Japanese artists were inspired to create their own views of the road.  This includes Hiroshige’s contmperary Kunisada Utagawa and modern artist Sekino Junichiro. Western artists were also influenced by this series.  Vincent Van Gogh incorporated stylistic elements from the Tokaido series into his own work, such as bright colors, natural details, and unconventional perspectives. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was an enthusiastic collector of Hiroshige’s prints and this series in particular. Wright showed his collection at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1906 and later donated his prints to the museum.

(Previous Theme) This month we are highlighting the artist Shiro Kasamatsu who worked in both the Shin Hanga (new prints) and Sosaku Hanga (creative prints) style of print making.

Born in Tokyo, Kasamatsu was part of the group of painters that was recruited by publisher Watanabe Sanzaburo to revive the technique of making woodblock printing. At age 13, he started as a student of the painter Kaburagi Kiyokata, a traditional master of Bijin-ga, pictures of beautiful women, who had been trained by the great Meiji artist Yoshitoshi. Watanabe was impressed with Kasamatsu’s paintings and convinced him to start designing woodblock prints in 1919 as part of his stable of artists that included Hasui Kawase and Yoshida Hiroshi. Almost all of Kasamatsu’s early woodblocks were destroyed in a fire in Watanabe’s print shop following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. By the late 1940s he had designed more than 50 prints for Watanabe. In the 1950s he switched to rival publisher Unsodo and produced more than 100 bird and animal prints, landscapes, and “famous views.” In addition to the Shin Hanga approach where the artist works with a team of people including wood carvers and printers, Kasamatsu also worked using the Sosaku Hanga approach wherein the artist took on the jobs of carving the blocks and printing the prints as well as designing them. He produced nearly 80 Sosaku Hanga prints between 1955 and 1965 which he also self-published.

(Previous Theme)This month we are returning to the theme of Yokohama Prints – scenes of Westerners around the treaty port of Yokohama done in the last years of the Edo period before the Meiji Restoration, roughly 1855-1868. The story begins with the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry.

Naval Officer Matthew Perry had a long distinguished career in the US Navy starting in 1809 as a midshipman.  By the time he arrived in Tokyo Bay in 1853, he had been on many ships and had reached the rank of Commodore which was an operation title for the commander of a squadron of ships in those days.  He had some notable actions prior to that.  He claimed Key West for the US in 1822.  During the 1830s he was commandant of the New York Navy Yard. He oversaw construction of the Navy’s second steam frigate USS Fulton, which he commanded after its completion. He is called “The Father of the Steam Navy”, and he organized America’s first corps of naval engineers, and conducted the first US naval gunnery school from 1839-1841. He saw plenty of action during the Mexican-American war by capturing Mexican port cities and personally leading a 1,173-man landing force that attacked and took the city of San Juan Bautista from land.

While Perry was going up the ranks, Japan remained in a state of feudal isolation with a policy that had led to 250 years of national seclusion. During this time Japan had developed a unique culture that we are still exploring today.  But in 1852, it also meant that whaling sailors who shipwrecked off Japan could expect imprisonment or execution if they came ashore.  It was also at a time of power projection by America.  Coaling stations were needed to resupply US ships in the Far East along with new trading partners.  The desire to have a US presence in the Far East caused Pres Millard Fillmore to dispatch Commodore Perry with a squadron of ships whose mission was to force the opening of Japanese ports to American trade. Perry made 2 trips to Tokyo Bay.  On his first trip, he did some saber rattling by firing his 73 cannon on the 4th of July.  Shortly after, he presented letters to the Japanese emperor before leaving port for a trip to Hong Kong.  The following year of 1854, after initial resistance, Perry was permitted to land at Kanagawa, near the site of present-day Yokohama on March 8, and the treaty known as the Convention of Kanagawa was signed on 31 March.  Over time, the treaty was accepted by the Shogun who was actually the de facto ruler and other treaties were executed with the European nations that also wanted to trade in the Far East:  Great Britain, France, Russia, and the Netherlands who along with the US were known as the 5 Treaty Nations.  This group of nations was allowed to set up portage and warehouses in the city of Yokohama along with allowing their representatives to live there.

Once re-opened, the Japanese people were both amazed and interested in the habits of these foreigners, along with their dress, culture, and technology.  They had never seen anything like it.  As the main way to provide pictures to the masses, woodblock prints were used to fill the thirst for knowledge.  Woodblock print teams produced a dazzling array of images of foreigners often depicting those things that the Japanese knew least about but were commonplace to the Americans and Europeans.  Prints frequently display images of people eating with silverware, drinking from stemware, and smoking cigarettes.  There is a great interest in the uniforms that the military men wore.  You will find all manner of wonky epaulets in these images, along with military men in baggy pants.  There is interest in the women as well.  No one is quite sure where the feathered headdresses came from, but many prints depict women wearing them as they ride horses or go about daily life with their families.  Children and their activities were also of interest to the curious Japanese.  And the Japanese love of technology meant that ships, trains, and hot air balloons were the focus of many a print.

The initial prints around the late 1850s and early 1860s have a thoroughly Japanese feel often lacking in single point perspective and noted for the ukiyo-e style poses of the characters.  By the end of the 1860s, the prints have become much more lifelike and feature a western perspective.  The sophistication of these later prints demonstrate the way Japan is about to rush forward to modernity in an effort to catch these foreign nations and the degree to which the Shogun’s national seclusion is at an end.  The prints are a wonderful snapshot of about a dozen years that saw the end of the Edo period with the Meiji Restoration.  My late father-in-law collected these prints as examples of the long relationship between the US and Japan.  He served 2 tours in Japan as a diplomat after WW2 when he acquired many of his prints.  He continued to do so through the rest of his life and later gave the best of his collection to the Smithsonian where they are today.  He enjoyed looking at these prints and often remarked on how they could be viewed on different levels – as culture, history, technology, and most of all, as works of art.

(Previous Theme) This month our theme is artist Yoshitoshi, Tsukioka (1839-1892) – the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing.

Yoshitoshi is also regarded as one of the form’s greatest innovators. His career began during the last few years of the Edo period and flourished during the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing. By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost alone in his struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level. Prints from several of his series such as “100 Aspects of the Moon” and “Warriors Trembling with Courage” are highly sought by collectors. At several points in his life, his work turned dark as he was plagued by mental illness. During these times, his designs would incorporate murder, torture and plenty of blood. His most brilliant work came near the end of his life before his mental problems returned. He was plagued by delusions and ended up in a mental institution for much of the last year of his life. He was released in May 1892 and died a month later of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 53.

Visit the artist page for the full list of his work for sale.

(Previous Theme) This month our theme is artist Kogyo, Tsukioka (1869-1927) – master of the Noh print.

Noh is a major form of classical Japanese dance-drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Like Kabuki, it is highly stylized. Noh is often based on tales from traditional literature with a supernatural being transformed into human form as a hero narrating a story. Noh integrates masks, costumes and various props in a dance-based performance, requiring highly trained actors and musicians. Emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures while the iconic masks represent the roles such as ghosts, women, deities, and demons.

Kogyo’s work vividly portrays the traditional theater of Noh. He created over 550 prints, in three major print series, documenting Noh performances, with focus on the costumes and poses of the actors. These prints appeared in magazines, books and posters. At the age of fifteen he apprenticed with the great woodblock artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who had married his mother. Yoshitoshi and Chikanobu are probably the most popular artists of the Meiji era. Kogyo’s interest in Noh was likely sparked by Yoshitoshi, who also had a lifelong fascination with Noh. He went on to study with the woodblock artist Ogata Gekko and developed a style that synthesized Western and traditional Japanese artistic styles. The Noh prints created by Kogyo serve as an artistically elegant and beautiful record of this theatrical genre’s customs and performances.

(Previous Theme) This month our theme is not an artist or era, but the many bridges seen in Japanese prints.

Woodblock print artists have a love affair with bridges, known as bashi in Japanese. Sometimes the bridge is the focus of the print, such as the famous Half Moon Bridge depicted by several prominent artists, such as Toshi Yoshida. It is a complex bridge which uses the structural engineering of the arch. Although arches have were used in the West since Roman times to build bridges and other structures, the arch was not a feature of Japanese architecture. Unfortunately, arched construction has limitations on size. In order to span larger bodies of water, the builders have to resort to a series of arches such as the Kintai bridge which was depicted by Tokuriki and others. Often the bridge is seen as a backdrop to the real action such as Tokuriki’s delightful play of fireflies at night next to the Uji river bridge, or Hiroshige’s iconic print of drenched pedestrians (Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge).

You can see all the bridges in our web store by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner and then typing “bridge” into the search box and hitting enter. By the way, using the search feature is a great way to look for artists, locations, or even themes such as birds, snow, children, cherry blossoms, etc. Stay safe and keep looking at art!

Our Previous Featured Theme: Yokohama Prints: