Two Lovers

Two Lovers is one of the intimate figural prints by Mizuno Toshikata, a Meiji designer whose training as a Yoshitoshi student gave him an unusual gift for staging private moments. The work is preserved through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org's aggregation of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria collection (image reference dscn1830) and exemplifies the kind of two-figure composition that Toshikata returned to throughout his career. He had absorbed from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi the principle that psychological tension between figures can carry a print as much as elaborate setting or pattern work, and Two Lovers leans on that lesson: the relationship between the pair is conveyed through posture and angle of gaze rather than through any narrative caption. Toshikata's mature line work, refined during the 1890s when he was simultaneously producing senso-e for the Sino-Japanese War market and continuing to design bijinga and literary illustrations, is consistent with the technical level visible in this design. He worked with the major Tokyo publishers of the era, and his prints from this period are notable for clean carving, restrained color washes, and a willingness to let textile pattern do narrative work. The lovers theme had long been a staple of ukiyo-e, but where Edo-period predecessors such as Utamaro tended toward eroticized presentation, Meiji prints by artists like Toshikata more often treat the subject with reserve, reflecting changing standards of public propriety after the Meiji Restoration. The undated record at ukiyo-e.org leaves the precise commission unidentified, but the print's interest lies in how it places Toshikata within a continuing tradition of two-figure intimacy stretching back through Yoshitoshi to the earlier ukiyo-e masters.