The Tiger Killer

The Tiger Killer almost certainly depicts one of the canonical Japanese tiger-slaying heroes — most often Kato Kiyomasa, whose tiger hunts during the Korean campaigns of the 1590s became a staple of Edo-period [musha-e](/glossary/musha-e), or alternatively a Suikoden figure such as Wu Song adapted into Japanese print culture by Kuniyoshi. The composition presumably pairs an armored warrior with a leaping or pinned tiger, the two bodies interlocked across the sheet. Mori's handling would resolve both figures into broad, flat color planes bounded by the emphatic black contour drawn from his [kappazuri](/glossary/kappazuri) stencil background, with the tiger's stripes printed as graphic repeats rather than modeled through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi). The print sits within his sustained engagement with warrior subjects from kabuki and historical legend, carved and printed by his own hand in accordance with [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) practice. Animal subjects in his work tend to appear in this combative register rather than the contemplative [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) tradition of birds and flowers.