Yoshitoshi's '28 Famous Murders with Verse' (1866 - 1867)

Introduction

This page is a catalog all the prints by Yoshitoshi in the series 'Eimei nijūhasshūku (英名 二十八 衆句 - 28 Famous Murders with Verse)', of which Yoshitoshi produced half, with Yoshiiku (1833-1904) being responsible for the others.

It dates from quite early in Yoshitoshi's career, when he was about twenty-seven, two decades before his well-known masterpieces such as his great series "One Hundred Aspects of the Moon" (1885-1892), and "New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts" (often called simply "Thirty-Six Ghosts") (1889-1892).

The series contains illustrations of events which often have a historical background, and were usually well-known from kabuki and noh plays.

The series contains text by what is claimed to be ten different writers, although one was listed twice, as Sanzantei and Kōrai.

If you better images than the ones below, or iii) missing information about individual prints, please let us know. There is also a title page, dating from the autumn of 1865, which we do not have an image of.

Technical details

Previous cataloguings

This series appears in: 
	Eric van den Ing, Robert Schaap, "Beauty and Violence: Japanese
		Prints by Yoshitoshi 1839-1892",
		Havilland, Eindhoven, 1992
where it appears as series #16 (pp. 103-104). It is also listed in Keyes' thesis: 
	Roger. S. Keyes, "Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and
		Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1839-1892",
		Cinncinnati, 1982
as series #183. The complete series is illustrated in: 
	Kazuichi Hanawa, Suehiro Maruo, "Bloody Ukiyo-e in 1866 and 1988)",
		Libro-Port, Tokyo, 1988
We use the Keyes/B+V numbers for the table of prints images/information in the section below. The following table gives a concordance between the B+V numbers, and the print numbers from the title page of the series: 





B+V
Series

Series
B+V





1
26

2
9





2
22

4
7





3
8

6
14





4
10

8
3





5
20

10
4





6
18

12
8





7
4

14
10





8
12

16
12





9
2

18
6





10
14

20
5





11
24

22
2





12
16

24
11





13
28

26
1





14
6

28
13












The Prints


To see a larger, roughly full-screen, image of any print, please click on the
thumbnail; these images are sized to produce reasonable detail (if we have an
original that big), and are fairly compressed.




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
Description






441KB
Title Page



  





  

#1
1866/11-12
The prostitute Ohyaku and a seated ghost

  







#2
1866/12
Inga Kozō Rokunosuke wiping his sword

  







#3
1866/12
Danshichi Kurobei murdering the old man in the mud

  







#4
1866/12
Katsuma Gengobei reading a blood-stained letter

  







#5
1866/12
Gosho Gorozō battling a shadow

  







#6
1867/1
Yurugi Sogen with a head on a go board

  







#7
1867/4
Fukuoka Mitsugi with flying papers, severed head

  







#8
1867/4
Enjō Kihachiro fallen at the foot of a statue

  







#9
1867/4
Furuteya Hachirōbei murdering a woman in a graveyard

  







#10
1867/4
Shirai Gompachi slashing an assailant by a fire

  







#11
1867/4
Takekura Sukekichi and overturned palanquin

  






488KB
#12
1867/5
Inada Kyūzō Shinsuke: woman suspended from rope

  







#13
1867/5
Naosuke Gombei ripping off a face

  







#14
1867/5
The murder of Kasamori Osen

  

















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© Copyright 2009 by J. Noel Chiappa and Jason M. Levine