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Kyosai | Comic One Hundred Turns of the Rosary, One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyosai

$0.00

河鍋曉齋 Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)

狂斎百狂 どふけ百万編
Comic One Hundred Turns of the Rosary, from the series of One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyosai

1864

木版画 | 三联续绘-纵绘大判 | 37.4cm x 26.8cm x 3
Woodblock-print | Triptych-Oban-tate-e | 37.4cm x 26.8cm x 3

早期版次；颜色鲜艳；品相非常好
Fine impression, color and condition

$3,288

Though briefly a student of Kuniyoshi, and thought to be inspired by Hokusai, it’s hard to divine the influences of Kawanabe Kyosai, or figure out what on Earth is going on in this amazingly energetic print. But if you know a little about his life, and about the changes he witnessed in Japan during his lifetime, it starts to make sense.

After studying drawing and painting, Kyosai became a caricaturist at a time when Japan was going through a momentous shift, one unprecedented in human history, metamorphosing at breakneck pace from a feudal society to a modern nation. But it wasn’t easy, and borrowing from the Ukiyoe tradition of showing events without really showing them, Kyosai depicted the tale of his times in this wild triptych.

We see a five-tentacled octopus (yes, an oxymoron), surrounded by all manner of samurai and other beings. The words in the weird bubble-head men at the top say, essentially, “A nonsense picture! How wonderful!”

But it’s not nonsense. Every line has meaning. The scholar Andreas Marks – who has chosen this print as one of Ukiyoe’s 200 greatest masterpieces – lays it out like this: each tentacle represents a Western power trying to gain a foothold in Japan, while the surrounding men passing along prayer beads represent the warring samurai and Imperial factions incompetently trying to repel the foreign intruders. One can even divine the samurai of specific regions such as Tosa, who would in time rise up in vain to fight the Emperor’s forces.

It was a truly fractious and dramatic time, as captured wonderfully in his over-the-top design.

Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.

河鍋曉齋 Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)

狂斎百狂 どふけ百万編
Comic One Hundred Turns of the Rosary, from the series of One Hundred Wildnesses by Kyosai

1864

木版画 | 三联续绘-纵绘大判 | 37.4cm x 26.8cm x 3
Woodblock-print | Triptych-Oban-tate-e | 37.4cm x 26.8cm x 3

早期版次；颜色鲜艳；品相非常好
Fine impression, color and condition

$3,288

Though briefly a student of Kuniyoshi, and thought to be inspired by Hokusai, it’s hard to divine the influences of Kawanabe Kyosai, or figure out what on Earth is going on in this amazingly energetic print. But if you know a little about his life, and about the changes he witnessed in Japan during his lifetime, it starts to make sense.

After studying drawing and painting, Kyosai became a caricaturist at a time when Japan was going through a momentous shift, one unprecedented in human history, metamorphosing at breakneck pace from a feudal society to a modern nation. But it wasn’t easy, and borrowing from the Ukiyoe tradition of showing events without really showing them, Kyosai depicted the tale of his times in this wild triptych.

We see a five-tentacled octopus (yes, an oxymoron), surrounded by all manner of samurai and other beings. The words in the weird bubble-head men at the top say, essentially, “A nonsense picture! How wonderful!”

But it’s not nonsense. Every line has meaning. The scholar Andreas Marks – who has chosen this print as one of Ukiyoe’s 200 greatest masterpieces – lays it out like this: each tentacle represents a Western power trying to gain a foothold in Japan, while the surrounding men passing along prayer beads represent the warring samurai and Imperial factions incompetently trying to repel the foreign intruders. One can even divine the samurai of specific regions such as Tosa, who would in time rise up in vain to fight the Emperor’s forces.

It was a truly fractious and dramatic time, as captured wonderfully in his over-the-top design.

Interested in purchasing?
Please contact us.

Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)

Kawanabe Kyosai was a caricaturist at a time when Japan was going through a momentous shift, one unprecedented in human history, metamorphosing at breakneck pace from a feudal society to a modern nation.

He lived from 1831 to 1889, he studied painting and drawing, and was briefly a student of Kuniyoshi. But he will be remembered mostly within the political milieu, exaggerating human features and scenes, and often depicting events without actually depicting them.

For example, during the Satsuma Rebellion in the 1870s, in which samurai rebels fought the new Meiji government, he illustrated those battles in extreme detail, with one change from reality – the warring soldiers were all frogs.

His prints have a loose, frantic quality, as if they were dashed off in a rush before the authorities knocked on the door. They are filled with manic energy – indeed mayhem burst forth from the page even more maniacally than in the designs of his brief master, Kuniyoshi, or Kuniyoshi’s most famous student (and Kyosai’s contemporary), Yoshitoshi.

But it was hard to typecast him. He also produced paintings with an almost classic quality. Indeed, the wildly varying types of work he produced resulted in him being a lesser-known Ukiyoe light, despite his remarkable ability. But that seems to be changing.