Episodes from Unknown Japanese History
About This Series
Episodes from Unknown Japanese History belongs to the historical-didactic strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's late print production and applies his draftsmanship to the cycle of lesser-known episodes from the pre-modern Japanese past that the post-Restoration popular press treated as material for civic edification and entertainment. The conceit of an unknown or unofficial history (gaishi, hishi) had become a productive Meiji-era publishing rubric, by which compilers and illustrators reached beyond the canonical events of the orthodox chronicles to a wider repertory of court, military and regional anecdote drawn from the medieval and early-modern record. Kiyochika's series presents such episodes through full-figure historical compositions executed in the firm contour and reserved palette of his mature print style, drawing on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e and rekishi-e tradition but recasting it for the Meiji audience that was being trained to read its national past through the new historiography. The artist had by this point moved well beyond the celebrated kosen-ga Tokyo views with which he had established his reputation in 1876 into a varied output of historical, didactic, journalistic and satirical work, and the Unknown History prints belong to the same field as his Nihon gaishi cycle and his other late historical projects. Impressions are best documented through the Kiyochika holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Sackler in Washington and the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which together preserve the most substantial Western record of his late historical and didactic production.
Prints in This Series (5)
Frequently Asked Questions
Episodes from Unknown Japanese History belongs to the historical-didactic strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's late print production and applies his draftsmanship to the cycle of lesser-known episodes from the pre-modern Japanese past that the post-Restoration popular press treated as material for civic edification and entertainment. The conceit of an unknown or unofficial history (gaishi, hishi) had become a productive Meiji-era publishing rubric, by which compilers and illustrators reached beyond the canonical events of the orthodox chronicles to a wider repertory of court, military and regional anecdote drawn from the medieval and early-modern record. Kiyochika's series presents such episodes through full-figure historical compositions executed in the firm contour and reserved palette of his mature print style, drawing on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e and rekishi-e tradition but recasting it for the Meiji audience that was being trained to read its national past through the new historiography. The artist had by this point moved well beyond the celebrated kosen-ga Tokyo views with which he had established his reputation in 1876 into a varied output of historical, didactic, journalistic and satirical work, and the Unknown History prints belong to the same field as his Nihon gaishi cycle and his other late historical projects. Impressions are best documented through the Kiyochika holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Sackler in Washington and the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which together preserve the most substantial Western record of his late historical and didactic production.
The Episodes from Unknown Japanese History series contains 1 prints, created by Kobayashi Kiyochika.
The Episodes from Unknown Japanese History series was created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親).
We currently have 5 of 1 known prints from the Episodes from Unknown Japanese History series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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