Tale of Heike
About This Series
Tale of Heike gathers the stencil prints in which Mori Yoshitoshi (1898-1992) treated the Heike monogatari, the medieval Japanese war epic of the late twelfth-century Genpei conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans, in his characteristic kappazuri idiom of cut-paper stencil, brushed pigment, and persimmon-tannin-sized washi. Mori, who had trained in early life as a textile pattern designer and as a katagami stencil cutter in the dyer's workshop tradition, brought to his postwar print career an intimate command of the cut-paper craft from which he developed a personal kappazuri printmaking method, the broad areas of mineral pigment applied through a stiffened kakishibu-soaked stencil and the contour-defining black drawn through a separate cut, producing the deliberate flatness, contour-bound color, and folk-art directness that distinguish his sheets from contemporary woodblock practice. The Heike sheets belong to the principal subject of his mature career, the recasting of classical Japanese narrative, kabuki theater, festival, and Buddhist legend in the visual vocabulary of mingei folk art that he had adopted under the influence of Serizawa Keisuke, with whom he worked closely from the late 1940s. Heroes of the Heike such as Yoshitsune, Benkei, Tomomori, Atsumori, and Lady Tokiko offered Mori a cast of figures whose iconography was already established in kabuki, ukiyo-e warrior prints, and Noh, and his stencil treatments select moments of high theatrical incident: the death of Atsumori at Ichi-no-tani, Benkei on the boat at Daimotsura, the drowning of Lady Tokiko at Dan-no-ura. The series belongs to the postwar mingei revival that crystallized around the Japan Folk Crafts Museum and the publications of Yanagi Soetsu, and impressions are documented in the holdings of the Tokyo National Museum, the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other major collections of twentieth-century Japanese print.
Prints in This Series (2)
Frequently Asked Questions
Tale of Heike gathers the stencil prints in which Mori Yoshitoshi (1898-1992) treated the Heike monogatari, the medieval Japanese war epic of the late twelfth-century Genpei conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans, in his characteristic kappazuri idiom of cut-paper stencil, brushed pigment, and persimmon-tannin-sized washi. Mori, who had trained in early life as a textile pattern designer and as a katagami stencil cutter in the dyer's workshop tradition, brought to his postwar print career an intimate command of the cut-paper craft from which he developed a personal kappazuri printmaking method, the broad areas of mineral pigment applied through a stiffened kakishibu-soaked stencil and the contour-defining black drawn through a separate cut, producing the deliberate flatness, contour-bound color, and folk-art directness that distinguish his sheets from contemporary woodblock practice. The Heike sheets belong to the principal subject of his mature career, the recasting of classical Japanese narrative, kabuki theater, festival, and Buddhist legend in the visual vocabulary of mingei folk art that he had adopted under the influence of Serizawa Keisuke, with whom he worked closely from the late 1940s. Heroes of the Heike such as Yoshitsune, Benkei, Tomomori, Atsumori, and Lady Tokiko offered Mori a cast of figures whose iconography was already established in kabuki, ukiyo-e warrior prints, and Noh, and his stencil treatments select moments of high theatrical incident: the death of Atsumori at Ichi-no-tani, Benkei on the boat at Daimotsura, the drowning of Lady Tokiko at Dan-no-ura. The series belongs to the postwar mingei revival that crystallized around the Japan Folk Crafts Museum and the publications of Yanagi Soetsu, and impressions are documented in the holdings of the Tokyo National Museum, the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and other major collections of twentieth-century Japanese print.
The Tale of Heike series contains 2 prints, created by Yoshitoshi Mori.
The Tale of Heike series was created by Yoshitoshi Mori (森義利).
We currently have 2 of 2 known prints from the Tale of Heike series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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