Chitasei Goyo with Astronomical Instruments from 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden (Tzsuzoku Suikoden Goketsu Hyakuhachi Nin No Hitori)

This print from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, accessed through ukiyo-e.org, shows Chitasei Goyo, the Star of Wisdom Wu Yong, posed with astronomical instruments. It belongs to the series Tsuzoku Suikoden Goketsu Hyakuhachi Nin no Hitori, the 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden, a recurring Japanese subject derived from the Chinese vernacular novel Shuihu zhuan. Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921) is best remembered as a leading bijin-ga designer within the shin-hanga revival, but his career also included extended study of classical ukiyo-e and a brief excursion into warrior-print subjects of this kind. The choice of attribute is telling: Wu Yong, the strategist of the Liangshan band, is presented here through the calipers and armillary forms of a star reader, emphasizing his cunning rather than martial prowess. Goyo's training at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts under Kuroda Seiki had grounded him in Western academic drawing, and his later research on Harunobu and Utamaro gave him an unusual command of the historical ukiyo-e vocabulary. Both inputs are visible in the controlled draftsmanship and ornamental confidence of the design. The print predates his celebrated independent bijin-ga editions of 1915 to 1920, in which he supervised every carver and printer personally. Seen against that later output, this Suikoden sheet documents an artist still working through the lineages of his medium, testing the iconographic puzzles that gave Edo-period printmakers their richest material before turning his attention almost wholly to the depiction of modern women.