was a Japanese

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Abril Lamarque (1904–1999) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfre ...

. In the words of art historian Timothy Clark, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".

Biography

Living through the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

to the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

, Kyōsai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at Koga, he was the son of a

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

. His first shock was at the age of nine when he picked up a human head separated from a corpse in the Kanda river. After working for a short time as a boy with

ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...

artist

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Utagawa Kuniyoshi (, ; 1 January 1798 – 14 April 1861) was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting.Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric ''et al'' (2005). "Kuniyoshi" in He was a member of the Utaga ...

, he received his formal artistic training in the Kanō school under Maemura Tōwa (前村洞和, ? – 1841), who gave him the nickname "The Painting Demon", but Kyōsai soon abandoned the formal traditions for the greater freedom of the popular school. During the political foment which produced and followed the revolution of 1867, Kyōsai attained a reputation as a

. His very long painting on ''makimono'' (a horizontal type of Japanese handscroll/scroll) "The battle of the farts" may be seen as a caricature of this foment. He was arrested three times and imprisoned by the authorities of the shogunate. Soon after the assumption of effective power by the Emperor, a great congress of painters and men of letters was held at which Kyōsai was present. He again expressed his opinion of the new movement in a caricature, which had a great popular success, but also brought him into the hands of the police, this time of the opposite party. Kyōsai is considered by many to be the greatest successor of Hokusai (of whom, however, he was not a pupil), as well as the first political caricaturist of Japan. His work mirrored his life in its wild and undisciplined nature, and occasionally reflected his love of drink. Although he did not possess Hokusai's dignity, power or reticence, he compensated with a fantastic exuberance, which always lent interest to his technically excellent draughtsmanship. E-shimbun Nippon-chi

He created what is considered to be the first

manga magazine are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics an ...

in 1874: ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'', with Kanagaki Robun. The magazine was heavily influenced by '' Japan Punch'', founded in 1862 by Charles Wirgman, a British cartoonist. ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'' had a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many people, and ended after just three issues. In addition to his caricatures, Kyōsai painted a large number of pictures and sketches, often choosing subjects from the

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

of his country, Nô drama, nature and religion, for example ''The Temptation of Shaka Niorai'' or ''The goddess Kwannon on a dragon'' (on '' kakejiku'' frame). A fine collection of these works is preserved in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

; and there are also good examples in the National Art Library at South Kensington and the

Guimet Museum The Guimet Museum (full name in ; ''MNAAG''; ) is a Parisian art museum with one of the largest collections of Asian art outside of Asia that includes items from Cambodia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Tibet, India, and Nepal, among other countries. Found ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. The Kawanabe Kyōsai Memorial Museum was established in 1977, located at Warabi,

Saitama Prefecture is a Landlocked country, landlocked Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (January 1, 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 Square kilometre, km2 ( ...

, Japan. Erwin Bälz wrote in his diary that Kyosai died because of gastric cancer.Erwin Bälz - Das Leben eines deutschen Arztes im erwachenden Japan, Hrsg. Toku Bälz, 1930 A crater on Mercury has been named in his honor.

Bibliography

The most important work about Kyōsai's art and life was written by himself: ''Kyōsai Gadan'' (暁斎画談), or "Kyōsai's Treatise on Painting", half autobiography and half painting manual. An important contemporary work concerning the artist is ''Kawanabe Kyōsai-ō den'' (河鍋暁斎翁伝), or "Biography of the Old Man Kawanabe Kyōsai", by Iijima Kyoshin (飯島虚心). The work was finished in 1899, but published only in 1984. Many westerners came to visit Kyōsai, and their memoirs about the artist are valuable. The two important ones, both rare, are: * Émile Étienne Guimet, ''Promenades japonaises'', Paris, 1880 * Josiah Conder, ''Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyōsai'', Tokyo, 1911. Conder was a serious student of Japanese art; after some initial rejections, he was accepted as Kyōsai's pupil, and accompanied him for ten years until the master's death. The most updated, and easily available, reference to Kyōsai's life and works in English is: *Timothy Clark, ''Demon of painting: the art of Kawanabe Kyōsai'', London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by the British Museum Press, 1993

Gallery

File:Bake Bake Gakko.jpg, ''Bake-Bake Gakkō'' (化々學校), or "School for Spooks". In August 1872, the Meiji government decided to implement a system of compulsory education. In this caricature, both demons (above) and

kappa Kappa (; uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ; , ''káppa'') is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless velar plosive sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 20. It was d ...

(center) are learning vocabulary concerning their daily life. The former are taught by Shōki the demon queller, dressed in western-style uniform. Some goblins try to enter the school (below), but are blown away by the Wind God. File:Kawanabe Kyosai Renshishi2.jpg, ''Renjishi'' (連獅子), or "Dance of a Pair of Lions", by Kyōsai. ''Renjishi'' is a famous dance in the

Kabuki is a classical form of Theatre of Japan, Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with Japanese traditional dance, traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes ...

theatre. File:Izanagi and Izanami giving birth to Japan c1870 after Kawanabe Kyosai.jpg, Izanagi and Izanami giving birth to Japan, c. 1870 File:Guimet - Promenades japonaises, 1880 (page 16 crop).jpg, Promenades japonaises, 1880 File:Flowers and Birds, Kawanabe Kyōsai.jpg, ''Flowers and Birds'' (花鳥図), 1881, Exhibited at The second National Industrial Exhibition. File:Kawanabe Kyōsai - Frolicking Animals, Nekomata and Tanuki Badger.jpg, Frolicking Animals, Nekomata and Tanuki Badger File:Kawanabe Kyōsai, A Beauty in Front of King Enma's Mirror.jpg, A Beauty in Front of King Enma's Mirror File:Kawanabe Kyosai Jigoku Dayu (Hell Courtesan).jpg, Hell Courtesan File:Kawanabe Kyosai - Full Moon with Crow on Plum Branch - 1930.203 - Cleveland Museum of Art.tif, Full Moon with Crow on Plum Branch, 1930 File:「今昔未見生物猛虎之真図」-Never Seen Before- True Picture of a Live Wild Tiger (Konjaku miken, Ikimono mōko no shinzu) MET DP148115.jpg, Never Seen Before - True Picture of a Live Wild Tiger File:Japanese Mino ware (stoneware) plate - RC311.tif, Japanese Mino ware (stoneware) plate decorated with an image of rats attacking cats after Kawanabe Kyousai (1831-1899). Found at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth, England.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kawanabe, Kyosai 1831 births 1889 deaths Ukiyo-e artists 19th-century Japanese painters Japanese caricaturists Buddhist artists