Rua Xiaoqi (Katsuenra Genshoshichi), from the series "One Hundred and Eight Heroes of the Popular Water Margin (Tsuzoku Suikoden goketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori)"

Ruan Xiaoqi, transliterated in Japanese as Katsuenra Genshoshichi, is one of the three Ruan brothers who form the amphibious backbone of the bandit fleet in Utagawa Kuniyoshi's One Hundred and Eight Heroes of the Popular Water Margin. The Ruan brothers in the Chinese novel are poor fishermen turned naval warriors at the lakeside stronghold of Liangshan, and Kuniyoshi uses their connection to water as an expressive opportunity. The figure here is shown half-submerged or in close proximity to waves, his bare torso and dripping sash communicating both the physical reality of a fishing life and the heroic vigour that the series demands of every member of its 108-strong cast. Kuniyoshi's draughtsmanship of water, refined in his later masterpieces and his river landscapes, is already evident in the curling line of the waves and the way they support and frame the warrior. The Art Institute of Chicago houses this impression as part of the early-Tenpo Suikoden project, published by Kagaya Kichibei, that transformed Edo ukiyo-e warrior prints into a marquee genre. Kuniyoshi designed each hero in this series as a portrait of character, not merely action, and Ruan Xiaoqi's slightly grinning, rough-edged demeanour conveys the populist appeal of the Liangshan brotherhood. The Edo audience saw in these Chinese outlaws a fantasy of moral resistance to authority, an undertone that helped fuel the Suikoden craze of the late 1820s and 1830s and that secured Kuniyoshi's reputation as the leading musha-e designer of the Utagawa school.