Kenroku Yamato Kagami
About This Series
Kawanabe Kyosai's "Kenroku Yamato Kagami" is a printed book in the e-bon tradition belonging to the historical and didactic corpus through which nineteenth-century Japanese artists transmitted the narrative content of the national tradition to a popular reading audience. The title's "Yamato kagami," or "Mirror of Yamato," follows a long-established convention by which book titles framed their contents as historical or moral reflections, and the work is consistent with the broader nineteenth-century output of illustrated histories, biographies and instructive compendia that ukiyo-e and Kano-trained painters produced for the popular book market. The volume appears to belong to the late Edo or early Meiji period, when Kyosai's work for the popular book publishers was at its most prolific and when he was using the printed format as one of his principal vehicles for reaching a broad readership; precise publisher and dating attributions are difficult to establish in the absence of consistent Western cataloguing, but the popular Tokyo book publishers associated with Kyosai's other printed projects would be the natural candidates. The illustrations bear the characteristic combination of Kano-derived line control and the more energetic, freely brushed composition associated with his ukiyo-e training, and the work belongs to the same printed corpus as the "Kyosai hyakuzu" and the "Kyosai gadan" through which his late practice was disseminated. The book sits within Kyosai's wider effort to address the educated popular audience created by the Meiji-period expansion of literacy and book production, and is best understood alongside his other illustrated books rather than as an independent fine-print project. Examples are held in the British Museum, in the Kyosai Kinenkan in Warabi and in the principal Japanese collections of nineteenth-century printed book illustration.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
Kawanabe Kyosai's "Kenroku Yamato Kagami" is a printed book in the e-bon tradition belonging to the historical and didactic corpus through which nineteenth-century Japanese artists transmitted the narrative content of the national tradition to a popular reading audience. The title's "Yamato kagami," or "Mirror of Yamato," follows a long-established convention by which book titles framed their contents as historical or moral reflections, and the work is consistent with the broader nineteenth-century output of illustrated histories, biographies and instructive compendia that ukiyo-e and Kano-trained painters produced for the popular book market. The volume appears to belong to the late Edo or early Meiji period, when Kyosai's work for the popular book publishers was at its most prolific and when he was using the printed format as one of his principal vehicles for reaching a broad readership; precise publisher and dating attributions are difficult to establish in the absence of consistent Western cataloguing, but the popular Tokyo book publishers associated with Kyosai's other printed projects would be the natural candidates. The illustrations bear the characteristic combination of Kano-derived line control and the more energetic, freely brushed composition associated with his ukiyo-e training, and the work belongs to the same printed corpus as the "Kyosai hyakuzu" and the "Kyosai gadan" through which his late practice was disseminated. The book sits within Kyosai's wider effort to address the educated popular audience created by the Meiji-period expansion of literacy and book production, and is best understood alongside his other illustrated books rather than as an independent fine-print project. Examples are held in the British Museum, in the Kyosai Kinenkan in Warabi and in the principal Japanese collections of nineteenth-century printed book illustration.
The Kenroku Yamato Kagami series contains 1 prints, created by Kawanabe Kyosai.
The Kenroku Yamato Kagami series was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Kenroku Yamato Kagami series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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