The Eel Master (Unagi danna), illustration from Bugei Kurabu (Literary Club)

The Eel Master (Unagi danna), illustration from Bugei Kurabu (Literary Club) is a print by Mizuno Toshikata held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession reference at metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/55977). The catalog records the date as 1866, but Bugei Kurabu was a Meiji-period literary magazine founded in the 1890s, so the 1866 date is almost certainly a catalog typo for 1896 or a related year; Toshikata's documented Bugei Kurabu illustrations belong to the mid- and late-1890s. The magazine, published by Hakubunkan, was one of the most influential literary periodicals of the late Meiji period, and its kuchie (frontispiece) and inset color illustrations gave senior [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) designers like Toshikata a continuing role in commercial publishing as the market for single-sheet prints contracted. The Eel Master subject draws on the urban culture of unagi shops, a recognizable element of Tokyo daily life, and the title's affectionate honorific 'danna' (master, or proprietor) signals a genre-portrait orientation rather than a literary citation. As a Yoshitoshi student trained to characterize working figures through their tools and gestures, Toshikata was well placed to take on such illustrations. Among Meiji prints, Bugei Kurabu inserts are a distinct but increasingly studied category; they document the artist's late-career adaptation to magazine publication and his ability to compress narrative into the small frontispiece format. Collectors approaching Mizuno Toshikata's catalogue often find these illustrations among his most quietly inventive late works.