Biographies of modern men

The title corresponds to Kinsei kyōgiden (Biographies of Modern Men), a series Yoshitoshi produced in the early 1860s while establishing his independent reputation. Each sheet portrays a nineteenth-century figure — gamblers, swordsmen, firemen, dueling gangsters of the late Tokugawa underworld — depicted in a defining narrative moment rather than as a static portrait. The series belongs to the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) tradition of recording contemporary urban heroes (otokodate, "chivalrous commoners") and was commercially calibrated for a print-buying public hungry for accounts of the men who animated their cities. Compositionally, the prints typically present a single figure mid-action against a sparse background, with calligraphic biographical text occupying part of the upper sheet. Within Yoshitoshi's career, the series anticipates the later Eimei nijūhasshūku (Twenty-Eight Famous Murders with Verse) of 1866–67, sharing its interest in violence, ethical ambiguity, and the recognizable types of late-Edo street life that the artist returned to throughout his working life.