"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
This impression from the series Kyōdō Risshi-ki (Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On), dated 1886, presents Fukuchi Gen'ichirō as a model of Meiji self-cultivation and achievement. The series title echoes the vocabulary of risshin shusse — the ideology of upward mobility through diligence — that permeated Meiji popular culture following Samuel Smiles's Self-Help. Fukuchi, as founder of an influential newspaper and reformer of kabuki theater, represented the intersection of modern media and traditional cultural form that defined Meiji cultural production. Kiyochika's portrait likely employs a formal frontal or near-frontal composition with fine block cutting in the facial passages, distinguishing Fukuchi's physiognomy through careful line work. The 1886 date places this among a cluster of didactic portrait series Kiyochika produced in the mid-1880s, contributing to the print industry's role in constructing public models of exemplary modern Japanese identity for a broad literate audience increasingly accustomed to consuming public figures through the illustrated press.
"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.
