Wang Pu (Oho), from the series "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami)"
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Wang Pu (Oho), from the 1838 series Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami), exemplifies Utagawa Kuniyoshi's didactic approach to Chinese Confucian narratives reworked for an Edo audience. The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety, a Chinese moral compendium attributed to Guo Jujing of the Yuan dynasty, was widely circulated in Tokugawa Japan as instructional material for children, and Kuniyoshi's [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) series translates each exemplary story into a single, accessible image. Wang Pu is one of the famed paragons whose devotion to his parents was celebrated as a model of virtue, and Kuniyoshi renders the figure with the lively character work that distinguishes his treatment of legendary subjects. While Kuniyoshi is most famous for his warrior prints, his engagement with Chinese exemplars sits in the same imaginative territory: figures drawn from continental history and legend, given Japanese visual form for the Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) market. The compositional clarity, with its emphasis on a central figure and an explanatory cartouche of text, reflects the series' pedagogical aim. Color woodblock printing in the late 1830s allowed Kuniyoshi to deploy graded tones and decorative patterns in robes and settings, lending visual richness even to a moralizing subject. The series appeared during a productive decade for Kuniyoshi, when he was experimenting across portrait, landscape, and historical genres. This impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, where it documents the intersection of Confucian moral instruction and the commercial print culture of late Edo Japan.
Wang Pu (Oho), from the series "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami)" was created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳) in c. 1843.
Yes — Wang Pu (Oho), from the series "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami)" is part of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami) series by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
Wang Pu (Oho), from the series "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety as a Mirror for Children (Nijushiko doji kagami)" depicts children and daily life.
