Yoshitoshi's 'The Battle of the Cats and Mice' (1859)

Introduction

This page attempts to catalog all known prints in Yoshitoshi's series 'The Battle of the Cats and Mice ( Byōso kassen ) 1859'.

A playful chuban format series, featuring the antics of warring cats and mice. This is Yoshitoshi's first known series, published when he was just 20 years old. Yoshitoshi trys his hand here in illustrating a popular edo children's story, more of which can be seen here.

Technical details

• Dates: 1859
• Size: Ōban
• Signed: Ikkaisai Yoshitoshi hitsu
• Seals: Unread
• Publishers:
• Block carvers:

Previous cataloguings

	Roger. S. Keyes, "Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and
		Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1839-1892",
		Cinncinnati, 1982

where it appears as series #12.

This page (and list) is not necessarily complete; the series is not well documented, and there may be yet other prints which have not yet come to our attention. If you know of any prints from this series which aren't listed here, or have either i) information about any errors on the page, ii) better images than the ones below, or iii) missing information about individual prints (e.g. publisher, exact date) please let us know.

The Prints

If we have a higher-quality image, that image can be viewed by clicking on the "Large Image" link, which gives the size of the image (for the benefit of those on slow links). Sometimes there is more than one, if our best-quality image has issues (e.g. trimmed margins).

Thumbnail	Large image	Number	Date	Title (Kanji)	Title (Rōmaji)	Title (English)	Description
		#1	1859			Cat struck in rice sack / The cat army advances
		#2	1859			Cats tempt mice with food/ Mice eats rice while cat sleeps
		#3	1859			Mouse army advances, general on a dog/ Cat kneels