Huang Xiang (Ko Kyo), from the series "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety in China (Morokoshi nijushiko)"

Huang Xiang (Ko Kyo), from Utagawa Kuniyoshi's 1843 series Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety in China (Morokoshi nijushiko), depicts one of the celebrated young exemplars from the traditional Chinese compendium of filial devotion. According to the standard account, the nine-year-old Huang Xiang, having lost his mother and devoted to his father, would in summer fan his father's pillow and bedding so that his father could sleep cool, and in winter would warm the bedding with his own body before his father lay down. The double act of devotion across the seasons made Huang Xiang one of the touchstones of the Twenty-four Paragons cycle. Kuniyoshi, although best known for warrior prints, produced multiple series engaging Chinese moral and legendary material, reflecting both the prestige of Confucian learning in Tokugawa Japan and the broad popular interest in continental narrative. The Morokoshi nijushiko series translates the full cycle of paragons into the visual language of Edo ukiyo-e, typically pairing each story with a vivid figural composition and an explanatory text cartouche. As nishiki-e of the late Tenpo era, the print uses color woodblock techniques with careful attention to robe pattern, gesture, and interior setting that signal the time of year and the boy's filial action. This impression is preserved in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it joins other prints from the series to document Kuniyoshi's didactic Chinese-subject output.