Yoshitoshi's Carvers and Printers

Yoshitoshi's later prints show amazing levels of technical skill in the printing and publishing. Tradition holds that it was Yoshitoshi himself who drove this, asking for better and better results from them. [Ref needed.]

Prints such as "Graveyard Moon" (#25 from the series '100 Aspects of the Moon'), with its incredible capturing of the dry brushwork in the wooden post she is sitting on, show the absolute master achieved by his carvers. Prints like "Cassia-tree Moon" (#26 from the series '100 Aspects of the Moon'), with the amazing reproduction of the effects of a watery brush, show that the printers had become equally adept.

Many of Yoshitoshi's prints, particularly the later ones, have seals which record the name of the carver. There does not seem to be a print which records the name of a printer, although it is fairly common in later shin hanga prints (e.g. those of the printer Doi).

This page attempts to list all the carvers whom Yoshitoshi worked with, and show good images of their seals. It is currently in a very draft state, and we will be exending it considerably as we get more prints online.

Carver's and Printer's Seals

All carver's seals start with the character hori (彫), meaning "carver". Most reference books include this when they list the carver's name. Similarly, printer's seals start with the character suri (摺), meaning "printer".

Seal Readings

When seal readings are given, following the usual standard, the Chinese reading(s) are in uppercase, and the Japanese in lower. Characters are separated by '_', and alternative readings are given separated by '/'.

The character numbers, which identify the characters in the seal, are given from:

    Andrew N. Nelson, "The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary",
	Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland, 1974

which is a standard Japanese dictionary.

Table of Carver's Seals

Seal(s)	Name (Romaji)	Name (Kanji)	Reference	Characters	Comments
						The seal reads:
						The seal reads:

References

Ing: Eric van den Ing, Robert Schaap, "Beauty and Violence: Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi 1839-1892", Havilland, Eindhoven, 1992 - Numbers refer to prints

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