men (male humans); military uniforms; dresses (garments); porches; gardens; draperies (curtains)
The production and promulgation of the Constitution was a series of important political and cultural events in the 1880's that were widely illustrated by artists. On the morning of 11 February 1889 the emperor formally issued the Constitution in...
women; children (people by age group); men (male humans); kimonos; lanterns (lighting devices); fusuma; interior spaces
In the city of Sendai, several assassination attempts were made to overthrow the Date family. The print depicts a masked assassin being overpowered by a family retainer while the young heir is shielded by his nursemaid during an attack in the...
women; men (male humans); kimonos; hairstyles; trees; Single Built Works; bamboo; gates; fences; hats; streams
Meiji period color woodblock print depicting a woman closing a bamboo gate to a moonlit garden, while a man inside the building looks out a partially opened window.
In The Tale of the Heike, a low-ranking lady-in-waiting, Yokobue, fell in love...
Part of a series of 40 prints of scenes set inside the women's quarters of the shogun's palace in Edo depicting the leisure activities of high-born women. Here two elegantly dressed women play backgammon. One of the women sits behind a screen; she...
men (male humans); battles; warriors; armor (protective wear); flames; balconies
he 1898 print set "Heike monogatari" published by Fukuda Hatsujiro was reissued in 1906 by Narasawa Kenjiro, evidently available with non-Heike or Genji warriors added, of which this is an example. This new collection has appeared under the title...
men (male humans); women; children (people by age group); hunting; kimonos
These 2 pictures seem to be only tangentially related. At top Tanzi is dressed in deer hide so he could sneak into a herd of deer to get milk for his ailing parents. However, when a hunter was about to shoot the deer, Tanzi revealed his identity,...
Akoya, an entertainer in Kyoto’s Kiyomizu zaka pleasure quarters, was mistress to the Heike warrior Taira Kagekiyo (died 1196), who was captured at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185 but had escaped. The Genji commander ordered Hatakeyama Shigetada...
women; children (people by age group); hairstyles; mountains; shores (landforms); trees; jewelry; kimonos
In this series, Chikanobu created a dramatic juxtaposition of multicolored close-up figural images with distant landscape scenes printed in blue and peach-colored inks. The detailed depiction of women continues the nishiki-e tradition that the...
men (male humans); armor (protective wear); curtains; elderly
An image of an old man, bare-chested, with a knife in his hand, throwing a cup (which shatters) against a pillar. Yoshitoshi's Warriors Trembling with Courage is the transitional series from the clamor of Yoshitoshi's early prints-with their...
Kintaro, also called Kaidomaru, was raised in the wilderness of Mt. Ashigara by Yamauaba. Supposedly he could speak animal languages and is often depicted with animals (see prints 93.6.10 and 93.3.39 for treatments of Kintaro's youth.) As a young...
Modern and traditional ships pass by a mountain range at sea. In a vertical composition, Yoshitoshi updates the horizontal print by Hiroshige. A paddlewheel steamship plows through the waters at Maisaka as a traditional samurai views the future of...
In the autumn fashionable geisha would dress in their lover's garments to visit the neighborhood shrine and participate in Niwaka kyogen, impromptu skits about life in the brothels. Dressed like an elegant young man, a young lady glances up at a...
children (people by age group); women; trees; landscapes (representations)
Kaidomaru, also called Kintaro, was raised in the wilderness of Mt. Ashigara by Yamauaba. Supposedly he could speak animal languages and was famous for his strength. As a young man he became a companion of the legendary warrior Minamoto Raiko, and...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
A woman with a large yellow and black umbrella (open) is accompanied by three white herons. The relationship of the animal kingdom to the world of human beings is close in rural societies. People feel a kinship with the wild creatures around them. ...
legends (folk tales); women; rivers; waterfalls (natural bodies of water)
An image of a woman sitting in the base of a waterfall, praying as the water falls around her. Tamiya Gempachiro, a fencing master from the Ikoma clan in Sanuki Province, was put to death in 1624 by a rival. His wife was pregnant and after his...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
Between 1885 and 1892 Yoshitoshi published a series of 100 individual woodblock prints depicting figures from Japanese and Chinese legend, history, literature, and theater. These are the contents pages for the series, designed by the calligrapher,...
An image of a woman, bound, with hair in her mouth. Over the two-year period from 1887 to 1888, Yoshitoshi produced his last and most accomplished set of "newspaper prints" as supplements to the Yamato newspaper. Muraoka (1786-1873) was a...
Meiji period color woodblock triptych print depicting seven women in a room engaged in a poetry composition contest. Three of the women sit before writing tables, brushes in hand, writing poems on narrow strips of paper; a elderly woman sits with...
