Torii Kiyomoto ( ja, 鳥居清元; 1645–1702) was a

kabuki is a classical form of Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily-stylised performances, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers. Kabuki is thought to ...

actor from

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

and painter of billboards and other kabuki advertisements; the founder of the

Torii school A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The presence of a ''torii'' at the entrance is usually the simplest ...

of artists, he painted in an early form of what came to be known as the

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

style. Onstage, he went by the name Torii Shōshichi. Moving to

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

in 1687 with his son Shōbei, he made his home very close to the entertainment district. He was unsuccessful onstage, like many other Osaka actors who tried to adapt to the Edo acting styles and audience preferences, so he turned to focus exclusively on painting advertisements and billboards for the kabuki theater. Soon eclipsed by Shōbei, who took the name Torii Kiyonobu in his artistic career, the pair established a school of painting which strongly influenced that of the emerging ukiyo-e, and which monopolized the painting of kabuki signboards through the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

and into the 20th century. None of his work is known to survive today.

References

* Hickman, Money (1993). ''Enduring Alliance: The Torii Line of Ukiyo-e Artists and Their Work for the Kabuki Theatre''. Fenway Court, 1992. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. * Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796
{{DEFAULTSORT:Torii, Kiyomoto Ukiyo-e artists Kabuki actors 1645 births 1702 deaths Torii school People from Osaka Male actors from Osaka