"Portrait of Fukuchi Gen'ichirô, from the series Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On (Kyôdô Risshi-ki), Meiji period, dated 1886"
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Harvard Art Museum
- Image courtesy of
- Harvard Art Museum
Dated 1886, this print from the series Kyōdō Risshi-ki depicts Fukuchi Gen'ichirō, the journalist, playwright, and public intellectual central to Meiji cultural modernization. As long-serving editor of the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun, Fukuchi used the press to advocate for constitutional government and to critique radical Westernization, positioning himself as a moderate voice in the turbulent political landscape of the 1880s. His authorship of numerous kabuki history plays made him significant in adapting traditional theatrical form to Meiji subjects and audiences. Kiyochika's treatment within a didactic series format presents Fukuchi within the standardized compositional conventions of the Meiji honorific portrait, emphasizing formal bearing and contemporary dress as markers of cultivated modern identity. Woodblock portrait prints in this period served an explicitly educational and inspirational function, circulating among the literate public as material illustrations of the model citizen that Meiji reform ideology promoted. The series addresses that public directly through its prescriptive title.
"Portrait of Fukuchi Gen'ichirô, from the series Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On (Kyôdô Risshi-ki), Meiji period, dated 1886" was created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親).
"Portrait of Fukuchi Gen'ichirô, from the series Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On (Kyôdô Risshi-ki), Meiji period, dated 1886" depicts portraits.
