Five Tiger Generals of the Tales of the Water Margin (Suikoden goko shogun)"

Five Tiger Generals of the Tales of the Water Margin (Suikoden goko shogun), a 1823 [surimono](/glossary/surimono) by Yashima Gakutei in the Art Institute of Chicago, returns to the Suikoden craze that gripped Edo print culture in the early 1820s. The five tiger generals were a celebrated subset of the 108 bandit-heroes of Liangshan Marsh in the Chinese novel, picked out as the most ferocious warriors in the brotherhood. The serialized Japanese translation by Takizawa Bakin, illustrated by Katsushika Hokusai, had given the Suikoden a fresh life in Japan, and Utagawa Kuniyoshi's spectacular series of single-figure Suikoden warriors made the subject a sensation. Surimono designers like Yashima Gakutei, working in the Hokusai school under Hokusai himself, adapted the heroic vocabulary to their refined small format, producing kyoka-e in which the muscular bravado of warrior prints was offset by the genre's deluxe printing and the literary game of the accompanying verses. Here the five tiger generals are arranged on the sheet so that the poems printed alongside can read each warrior as a character study while still letting the group's collective ferocity register. Mineral pigments, blind embossing of armor and textiles, and burnished metallic powders give the print a tactile presence in the hand. As a Yashima Gakutei kyoka-e, Five Tiger Generals shows how the Hokusai school's interest in the Suikoden could be naturalized to the surimono tradition.