Utagawa Kunisada II

Utagawa Kunisada II (二代目歌川国貞, 1823–1880), born Takenouchi Eitarō (竹内栄太郎), was a Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock-print designer whose career bridged the final two decades of the Edo period and the opening decade of the Meiji era. As the direct heir to the studio of his father-in-law Utagawa Kunisada I — the most commercially dominant print designer of the nineteenth century — he inherited an enormous publisher network, a stable subject vocabulary anchored in kabuki actor portraits and Yoshiwara bijin-ga, and a brand-name signature that he would carry through the chaotic transition from Tokugawa Edo to imperial Tokyo. His prints, especially the floods of yakusha-e (actor prints) and Genji-themed designs he issued through the 1860s and 1870s, are among the most plentiful surviving woodblock prints from the closing chapter of the floating world.

He was born in the eighth month of Bunsei 6 (1823) in Edo and entered the studio of Utagawa Kunisada I — already by then the leading Utagawa-school designer — as a young teenager. The sequence of art names he adopted across his career follows the formal conventions of the school, with each new gō issued by his master to mark a promotion or transition. He worked first under the name Baichōrō Kunisada (梅蝶楼国貞), beginning around the late 1840s, signing prints that closely mimic his teacher's mature style. After his marriage to Kunisada I's adopted daughter, he received the more senior name Kunimasa III (三代目国政) — sometimes recorded in Western scholarship as Kunimasa IV depending on lineage counting — and worked under that signature through the 1850s and into the early 1860s. The Cleveland and Art Institute of Chicago records that note his earlier names alongside the eventual Kunisada II reflect this sequence of in-studio promotions.

When Kunisada I died in the twelfth month of 1864, Eitarō formally succeeded him. He took the name Kunisada II — appearing on prints as 二代国貞 (Nidai Kunisada) — and, by a long-standing convention in which the school's senior designer also held the Toyokuni name, as Toyokuni IV (四代豊国). The Toyokuni numbering has been debated by Japanese and Western scholars, and the Art Institute of Chicago's standard form 'Utagawa Kunisada II (Kunimasa III, Toyokuni IV)' captures the names under which he is most often catalogued.

His first major statement under the new name was the Memorial Portrait of Utagawa Kunisada I (Kōchōrō Toyokuni shōzō) of 1864, in which he pictured his deceased father-in-law in formal robes — a homage that simultaneously announced the heir's authority over the brand. From there he produced an enormous yakusha-e output through the late Tokugawa years, picturing leading kabuki stars in role portraits, triptychs of famous scenes, and the okubi-e bust formats his master had refined. Alongside the actor work he carried forward Kunisada I's most lucrative literary franchise: the long series of prints based on Ryūtei Tanehiko's bestselling parody novel Nise Murasaki inaka Genji, which had reset the Tale of Genji in the persons of the dashing Mitsuuji. The Cleveland Museum of Art's triptych Rustic Genji's Poetry Contest: Mitsuuji's Excursion to the Seaside to See Abalone Diving of 1865 — signed 'Kunisada II fude' — is a representative example.