was a designer of ''
ukiyo-e''
Japanese woodblock prints
Woodblock printing in Japan (, ''mokuhanga'') is a technique best known for its use in the ''ukiyo-e'' artistic genre of single sheets, but it was also used for printing books in the same period. Widely adopted in Japan during the Edo period (160 ...
and an illustrator of books and newspapers who was active from about 1850 to about 1880. He was born in
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 ...
(modern Tokyo), but neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. However, he was the oldest pupil of
Utagawa Kuniyoshi who excelled in prints of warriors,
kabuki actors, beautiful women, and foreigners (
Yokohama-e
are Japanese woodblock prints depicting non-East Asian foreigners and scenes in the port city of Yokohama.
The port of Yokohama was opened to foreigners in 1859, and ukiyo-e artists, primarily of the Utagawa school, produced more than 800 differ ...
). He may not have seen any of the foreign scenes he depicted.
[Roberts, Laurance P. (1976). ''A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer,'' p. 204.]
Yoshitora was prolific: he produced over 60 print series and illustrated over 100 books. In 1849 he produced an irreverent print called ''Dōke musha: Miyo no wakamochi'' ("Funny Warriors—Our Ruler's New Year's Rice Cakes"), which depicts
Oda Nobunaga
was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period. He is regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan.
Nobunaga was head of the very powerful Oda clan, and launched a war against other ''daimyō'' to unify ...
,
Akechi Mitsuhide, and
Toyotomi Hideyoshi making ''
mochi'' rice cakes for the shōgun
Tokugawa Ieyasu. A poem by Sawaya Kōkichi accompanies it, reading "Kimi ga yo wo tsuki katametari haru no mochi" ("Tamping down the reign firm and solid like spring rice cakes"). Censors interpreted the print as a criticism of authority and had Yoshitora manacles for fifty days. Soon after Yoshitora was expelled from Kuniyoshi's studio, possibly due to the print, but he continued to produce illustrations prolifically.
From the 1860s Yoshitora produced Yokohama-e pictures of foreigners amid rapid modernization that came to Japan after the country was opened to trade. He collaborated on a number of landscape series, and in the
Meiji period that began in 1868 he also worked in newspapers. The last of his known works appeared in 1882.
File:Utagawa Yoshitora (1860) English Couple (crop).jpg, Utagawa Yoshitora (1860) English Couple
File:Utagawa Yoshitora, Paris, France, 1862.jpg, Utagawa Yoshitora, Paris, France, 1862
File:Shogun-Tokugawa-Ieyasu.png, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu
File:Miyo no wakamochi.jpg, Miyo no wakamochi
File:Signatures of Utagawa Yoshitora reading from left- Ichimosai Yoshitora ga, Kinchoro Yoshitora ga and Mosai Yoshitora ga.jpg, Signatures of Utagawa Yoshitora reading from left to right:
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File:NDL-DC 9369963-083 Utagawa Yoshitora crd.jpg
File:DP148075.jpg, London
File:France (furansukoku).jpg, France, painted in 1865
Notes
References
*
Lane, Richard. (1978). ''Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.
OCLC 5246796*
*
* Roberts, Laurance P. (1976). ''A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer.'' New York: Weatherhill.
OCLC 185975982
External links
19th-century Japanese people
Ukiyo-e artists
Yoshitora
{{Japan-artist-stub