"The journalist Fukuchi Gen'ichiro from the series Instructions on the Basis of Success ( Kyodo nisshiki)"

This portrait print depicts Fukuchi Gen'ichirō (1841–1906), the prominent Meiji-era journalist, politician, and playwright who founded the newspaper Tōkyō Nichinichi Shinbun. The series Kyōdō nisshiki (Instructions on the Basis of Success) presented biographical profiles of successful Meiji figures, situating them as models for a modernizing Japan. Kiyochika renders the subject in a compositional mode that blends Western-influenced portraiture conventions with the [oban](/glossary/oban) woodblock format, likely showing Fukuchi in contemporary Western or Meiji-era dress. The print reflects the period's fascination with public intellectuals who navigated the intersection of traditional Japanese culture and imported modernity — Fukuchi himself straddled both worlds as a Kabuki reformer and newspaper editor. Kiyochika's characteristic tonal sensitivity, evident in nuanced ink gradation rather than pure outline, distinguishes this portrait from simpler biographical broadsheets of the same era.