Catalogue Raisonné of the Work of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892)
yo o tsumete
terimasarishi wa
natsu no tsuki
holding back the night
with its increasing brilliance
the summer moon
-- Yoshitoshi's death poem
Introduction
Yoshitoshi (芳年, 1839-1892) is generally considered the last
great master of the
Japanese woodblock print
(ukiyo-e)
- and by some, one of the great innovative and creative geniuses of that
artistic field.
During his life, he produced a large number of prints, estimated by some
authorities at over 10,000 in total; this included many
series
of prints, many of great merit, as well as numerous diptychs, triptychs, etc.
This site attempts to provide an online catalogue raisonné of
his entire output.
His career spanned two eras - the last years of the old feudal Japan, and the
first years of the new modern Japan. Like many Japanese, while interested in
the new things from the rest of the world, over time he became increasingly
concerned with the loss of many outstanding things from the traditional Japan,
among them the classic woodblock print.
By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle
against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was
adopting the mass reproduction methods of the West, like photography and
lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past,
he almost single-handedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock
print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.
While demand for his prints continued for a few years, eventually interest in
him waned, both in Japan, and around the world. The canonical view in this
period was that the generation of
Hiroshige
was really the last of the great woodblock artists, and more traditional
collectors stopped even earlier, at the generation of
Utamaro
and
Toyokuni.
However, starting in the 1970's, interest in him resumed, and re-appraisal of
his work has shown the quality, originality and genius of the best of it, and
the degree to which he succeeded in keeping the best of the old Japanese
woodblock print, while pushing the field forward by incorporating both new
ideas from the West, as well as his own innovations.
His life is perhaps best summed up by John Stevenson:
Yoshitoshi's courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e
another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst
of glory.
-- "Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon", 1992
His reputation has only continued to grow, both in the West, and among
younger Japanese, and he is now universally recognized as the greatest
Japanese woodblock artist of his era.
The Prints
We have indexed the prints which we have online on the site in several ways
(note that the site is still under construction, and we do not yet have all
his known prints online):
In addition, to help those who do not know much about Japanese prints, and
merely want to identify a print which they have been told is by Yoshitoshi,
we now have a new tool, a page which shows a sample print from each of his
series. If the print is from one of Yoshitoshi's series, they can use this
page to quickly locate the series their print is from:
At long last, we have started on a major addition to the Yoshitoshi site:
images of all the triptychs. Please see the header page here:
Here is some information about our content:
Additional Material
Here is some additional material on Yoshitoshi:
Helping Out
If you have a print (or an image of one) which we do not yet have, or a print
(or an image of one) where we currently have a poor image (some of our images
are small black-and-white illustrations gleaned from dealer catalogues, etc),
we (and other Yoshitoshi admirers) would really appreciate it if you could
provide us with a high-quality image for the site.
Instructions on how to provide print images, and to reach us, are below:
Other
Web Links
-
Yoshitoshi by Muian
- The largest other Yoshitoshi site on the Internet; entirely in Japanese
(now offline, but still available through that wonderful resource, the
Internet Archive)
-
Tsukioka/Taiso Yoshitoshi at Sinister Designs
- For many years, the best Yoshitoshi site in English on the Internet
- Tsubaki - Another private collection,
with a number of Yoshitoshi series
-
Claremont Colleges Digital Library - Yoshitoshi
- A mid-sized collection of excellent images of Yoshitoshi prints, about 100
-
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Yoshitoshi - Has a very large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 530 by Yoshitoshi
-
Los Angeles County Museum of Art - Yoshitoshi - Has a large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 400 by Yoshitoshi (many from the Herbert R. Cole Collection)
- Waseda University
-
Theatre Research - Yoshitoshi - Has a very large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 870 by Yoshitoshi
-
Library - Has a large collection of woodblock prints and books,
including about 170 by Yoshitoshi
-
Tokyo Metropolitan Library - Yoshitoshi - Has a large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 700 by Yoshitoshi
-
National Diet Library Rare Book Collection - Yoshitoshi - Has a large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 660 by Yoshitoshi
-
Edo-Tokyo Museum (via the Tokyo Digital Museum) - Yoshitoshi - Has a lot of prints,
including about 85 by Yoshitoshi
- Hagi Uragami Museum, Yamaguchi Prefecture
- Has a very large collection of woodblock prints, including about 625 by Yoshitoshi
-
Shizuoka Prefectural Central Library - Has a large collection of woodblock prints,
including about 240 by Yoshitoshi
-
British Museum - Has images of about 190 prints by Yoshitoshi
Sites About Particular Woodblock Topics
Recommended General Woodblock Sites
Catalogue Raisonnés for Other Woodblock Artists
© Copyright 2009-2013, 2018 by J. Noel Chiappa and Jason M. Levine
Last updated: 2/January/2018