Going to Greet Someone

Going to Greet Someone is an Edo ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), one of the last great masters of the Utagawa school and a designer renowned for the dynamic warrior prints that helped define late Edo-period woodblock culture. Held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the sheet reflects Kuniyoshi's deep facility with figure work outside the battlefield, where the same observational skill that animated his warrior prints is turned toward an everyday social moment. The composition centers on the act of approaching another person to offer a greeting, a quietly performative gesture that occupied an important place in Edo etiquette and that allowed ukiyo-e designers to study posture, gesture and dress with great care. Kuniyoshi shapes the figure with the supple line and balanced silhouette typical of his mature work, using costume pattern to anchor the body and to direct the viewer's eye through the print. The carefully arranged textiles function in the same way as the armor details in his warrior prints, providing a vehicle for the carver and printer to display their skill. Kuniyoshi trained under Utagawa Toyokuni I and emerged as a leading figure in the school during the 1820s and 1830s; by the time of works of this kind he had already established himself as one of the most inventive designers in Edo, equally at home with historical heroes, theatrical portraits and observational scenes of contemporary life. The Victoria and Albert Museum's holdings of his prints document this range, and Going to Greet Someone fits within the museum's broader account of Kuniyoshi as a designer who could shift seamlessly between the heroic and the everyday while remaining unmistakably an Edo ukiyo-e artist of the Utagawa lineage.