Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition
About This Series
Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition (Kyokun risshi mokuhon or a closely related title) belongs to the explicitly didactic strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's later print production, in which the artist applied his draftsmanship to the cycle of historical and legendary figures whose lives the new Meiji popular press and educational establishment held up as models of civic character. The vocabulary of risshi, the fixing of high ambition or resolve, was central to the post-Restoration culture of self-cultivation that grew up alongside the new school system and the periodical press, and a wave of biographical compilations and illustrated cycles in the 1880s and 1890s presented historical exemplars as material for the formation of the modern Japanese subject. Kiyochika had by this point moved well beyond the celebrated kosen-ga Tokyo views with which he had launched his career in 1876 into a varied output of historical, didactic and journalistic prints, and the Risshi mokuhon cycle exemplifies his treatment of the genre in the firm contour and reserved palette of his mature style. The roster of figures, drawn from the courtly, military and scholarly canon of the Japanese past and occasionally from the Chinese tradition, is treated in full-figure compositions that draw on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e and rekishi-e modes but recast them for the new audience trained to read history through the lens of Meiji moral pedagogy. The series belongs alongside Kiyochika's other late didactic cycles, including the Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On, and is 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.
Prints in This Series (3)
Frequently Asked Questions
Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition (Kyokun risshi mokuhon or a closely related title) belongs to the explicitly didactic strand of Kobayashi Kiyochika's later print production, in which the artist applied his draftsmanship to the cycle of historical and legendary figures whose lives the new Meiji popular press and educational establishment held up as models of civic character. The vocabulary of risshi, the fixing of high ambition or resolve, was central to the post-Restoration culture of self-cultivation that grew up alongside the new school system and the periodical press, and a wave of biographical compilations and illustrated cycles in the 1880s and 1890s presented historical exemplars as material for the formation of the modern Japanese subject. Kiyochika had by this point moved well beyond the celebrated kosen-ga Tokyo views with which he had launched his career in 1876 into a varied output of historical, didactic and journalistic prints, and the Risshi mokuhon cycle exemplifies his treatment of the genre in the firm contour and reserved palette of his mature style. The roster of figures, drawn from the courtly, military and scholarly canon of the Japanese past and occasionally from the Chinese tradition, is treated in full-figure compositions that draw on the iconography of the late-Edo musha-e and rekishi-e modes but recast them for the new audience trained to read history through the lens of Meiji moral pedagogy. The series belongs alongside Kiyochika's other late didactic cycles, including the Instructive Guide for Fixing One's Aim and Pressing On, and is 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.
The Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition series contains 1 prints, created by Kobayashi Kiyochika.
The Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition series was created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親).
We currently have 3 of 1 known prints from the Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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