One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyôsai
About This Series
Kawanabe Kyosai's "One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyosai" (Kyosai hyakkyo) is a companion to the better-known "Kyosai hyakuzu" and shares with it the hyakuzu format of one hundred designs gathered into a multi-volume sketch album, but is given over more singlemindedly to the wild, comic and grotesque subjects for which the artist had become famous in popular Meiji print culture. The title's "kyo" puns on the artist's own name and on the word for wildness or madness, a play that Kyosai used elsewhere in his self-fashioning and that signals the deliberately unbuttoned register of the volumes; the connection to his earlier adopted name "Kyosai" (the "mad painter") is unmistakable, and the album is best read as a programmatic statement of the comic and demonic side of his practice. The contents include demons in unflattering poses, animals translated into satirical genre, drunkards and street figures of contemporary Tokyo, and the loose-brushed monsters and ghosts on which his nineteenth-century reputation as the great heir to Hokusai's manga tradition was substantially built. Publication is generally placed in the late 1860s or 1870s, with subsequent reissues into the early Meiji period, and the album sits alongside the "Kyosai hyakuzu" and the "Kyosai gadan" as one of the three principal printed monuments of his late career. The Hyakkyo's deliberate vulgarity is consistent with the public persona that landed Kyosai in prison in 1870 for a caricature published at a gathering of contemporary artists, and the album should be read as part of a wider Meiji-period engagement with caricature and political satire that runs through his work and that distinguishes him from his more decorous contemporaries. Impressions are held in the British Museum's Kyosai holdings, the Kyosai Kinenkan in Warabi, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the principal Japanese collections.
Prints in This Series (2)
Frequently Asked Questions
Kawanabe Kyosai's "One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyosai" (Kyosai hyakkyo) is a companion to the better-known "Kyosai hyakuzu" and shares with it the hyakuzu format of one hundred designs gathered into a multi-volume sketch album, but is given over more singlemindedly to the wild, comic and grotesque subjects for which the artist had become famous in popular Meiji print culture. The title's "kyo" puns on the artist's own name and on the word for wildness or madness, a play that Kyosai used elsewhere in his self-fashioning and that signals the deliberately unbuttoned register of the volumes; the connection to his earlier adopted name "Kyosai" (the "mad painter") is unmistakable, and the album is best read as a programmatic statement of the comic and demonic side of his practice. The contents include demons in unflattering poses, animals translated into satirical genre, drunkards and street figures of contemporary Tokyo, and the loose-brushed monsters and ghosts on which his nineteenth-century reputation as the great heir to Hokusai's manga tradition was substantially built. Publication is generally placed in the late 1860s or 1870s, with subsequent reissues into the early Meiji period, and the album sits alongside the "Kyosai hyakuzu" and the "Kyosai gadan" as one of the three principal printed monuments of his late career. The Hyakkyo's deliberate vulgarity is consistent with the public persona that landed Kyosai in prison in 1870 for a caricature published at a gathering of contemporary artists, and the album should be read as part of a wider Meiji-period engagement with caricature and political satire that runs through his work and that distinguishes him from his more decorous contemporaries. Impressions are held in the British Museum's Kyosai holdings, the Kyosai Kinenkan in Warabi, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the principal Japanese collections.
The One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyôsai series contains 1 prints, created by Kawanabe Kyosai.
The One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyôsai series was created by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎).
We currently have 2 of 1 known prints from the One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyôsai series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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