Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On
About This Series
Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On belongs to the didactic-historical strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's late production, in which the artist applied his print idiom to the cycle of edifying tales drawn from Japanese and Chinese history that the Meiji state and the new popular press promoted as models of civic character. By the 1880s and 1890s Kiyochika's print career had moved beyond the celebrated kosen-ga of his earliest Tokyo views into a more varied output that included satirical, journalistic and explicitly instructive subjects, the last of these aligned with the educational programs of the post-Restoration government and with the moral periodicals that circulated alongside the school system. The title's emphasis on fixing one's aim (rissho) and pressing on (shojin) belongs to the vocabulary of Meiji self-cultivation, and the series accordingly assembles historical episodes and exemplary figures from the canon of pre-modern heroes whose lives could be read as illustrations of resolve and perseverance. Kiyochika treats the subjects with the firm contour and reserved color that distinguish his historical work of the period, drawing on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e tradition but recasting it for an audience that read its national past through the new Meiji historiography. The series belongs in the wider context of his didactic and historical print production of the 1880s and 1890s, alongside related cycles such as the Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition and the Episodes from Unknown Japanese History, and is best documented through the comprehensive Kiyochika holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum and the Sackler collection in Washington, which together preserve the most substantial Western record of his late didactic output.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On belongs to the didactic-historical strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's late production, in which the artist applied his print idiom to the cycle of edifying tales drawn from Japanese and Chinese history that the Meiji state and the new popular press promoted as models of civic character. By the 1880s and 1890s Kiyochika's print career had moved beyond the celebrated kosen-ga of his earliest Tokyo views into a more varied output that included satirical, journalistic and explicitly instructive subjects, the last of these aligned with the educational programs of the post-Restoration government and with the moral periodicals that circulated alongside the school system. The title's emphasis on fixing one's aim (rissho) and pressing on (shojin) belongs to the vocabulary of Meiji self-cultivation, and the series accordingly assembles historical episodes and exemplary figures from the canon of pre-modern heroes whose lives could be read as illustrations of resolve and perseverance. Kiyochika treats the subjects with the firm contour and reserved color that distinguish his historical work of the period, drawing on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e tradition but recasting it for an audience that read its national past through the new Meiji historiography. The series belongs in the wider context of his didactic and historical print production of the 1880s and 1890s, alongside related cycles such as the Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition and the Episodes from Unknown Japanese History, and is best documented through the comprehensive Kiyochika holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum and the Sackler collection in Washington, which together preserve the most substantial Western record of his late didactic output.
The Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On series contains 1 prints, created by Kobayashi Kiyochika.
The Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On series was created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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