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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Image courtesy of
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
Description
An untitled print from Kawanabe Kyosai's oeuvre, this woodblock sheet reflects the Meiji-era market for single-sheet prints that combined entertainment with technical virtuosity. Kyosai's prints issued during the 1870s through 1880s sometimes appeared in conjunction with popular fiction, rakugo storytelling traditions, or theatrical productions, and the images functioned both as standalone artworks and as cultural shorthand understood by literate urban viewers. The block-cutting translates Kyosai's brushwork into a vocabulary of varying line weights — thick outlines for figures, finer interior detail — a technical distinction that required skilled collaboration between the artist's studio and the publishing house's craftsmen.
More Prints by Kawanabe Kyosai
Tenpôzan in Osaka: Viewing Children's Sumo (Naniwa Tenpôzan kodomo sumô shôran), from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô
1863
Woodblock print
Kyosai, Royal Academy, London, FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING
2022
Original Museum Lithographic Exhibition Poster
from the series One Hundred Pictures by Kyôsai (Kyôsai hyakuzu)
Woodblock print
Old Picture of the Rashômon Gate (Rashômon no ko zu), from the series Scenes of Famous Places along the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô meisho fûkei), also known as the Processional Tôkaidô (Gyôretsu Tôkaidô), here called Tôkaidô meisho tsuzuki
Woodblock print
Frequently Asked Questions
- was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).