, also called "death pictures" or "death portraits", are

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese

woodblock prints Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is crea ...

, particularly those done in 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 of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk ta ...

style popular 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 character ...

(1603–1867) and into the beginnings of the 20th century. When 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 ...

actor died, memorial portraits were conventionally published with his farewell poem and posthumous name.Keyes, Roger ''et al.'' (1973). ''The Theatrical World of Osaka Prints,'' p. 320; Chin, Connie and Melinda Takeuchi
"Actors' Death Prints: Discovery of a New Genre."
''Horizons'' (Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University) Fall 2005, p. 7. Memorial portraits were created by ukiyo-e artists to honor a colleague or former teacher who had died.

Gallery

Memorial Portrait of Hiroshige, by Kunisada.jpg,

Hiroshige Utagawa Hiroshige (, also ; ja, 歌川広重 ), born Andō Tokutarō (; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ''ukiyo-e'' artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format l ...

by Kunisada, 1858 Kunisada shini e.jpg,

Kunisada Utagawa Kunisada ( ja, 歌川国貞; 1786 – 12 January 1865), also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III (, ), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He is considered the most popular, prolific and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodbloc ...

by Toyohara Kunichika, 1864 Yōshū Chikanobu Iwai Hanshiro VIII.jpg, Iwai Hanshirō VIII, by

Toyohara Chikanobu , better known to his contemporaries as , was a Japanese painter and printmaker who was widely regarded as a prolific woodblock artist during the Meiji epoch. Names Chikanobu signed his artwork . This was his . The artist's was ; and it w ...

1882

References

Bibliography

* Keyes, Roger S. and Keiko Mizushima. (1973). ''The Theatrical World of Osaka Prints: a Collection of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Japanese woodblock Prints in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.''Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art
OCLC 186356770
* Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). ''The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints.'' Amsterdam : Hotei.
OCLC 61666175

External links

* Kuniyoshi project

Ukiyo-e genres Japanese words and phrases {{Japan-art-stub

Gallery

See also

References

Bibliography

External links