Tales of the Floating World on Eastern Brocade

This page attempts to catalog all known prints in

It dates from relatively early in Yoshitoshi's career, when he was about twenty-eight, almost 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 popular stories (kōdon) of drama and violence by various story tellers, as retold by Kanagaki Robun ( 假名垣 魯文, although the name is now often written with the simplified first character 仮; 1829-1894), a native of Edo who was a writer of humorous and satirical fiction. His focus on the the contortions of Japanese society as it modernized in the Meiji period was likely a bond with Yoshitoshi, who was also interested in the challenges to Japanse society during this turbulent period.

The red cartouche in the upper corner contains the series title at the top, and at the bottom (according to Keyes), "[t]he name[] of the story teller". (We are in the process of reading all these names, and much progress has been made, but finalizing the readings, and adding the information to this page, will be left until other higher-priority tasks on the site are completed. One complicating factor is that black characters do not reproduce well against a red background in images, so high-quality images are needed before these names can be read.)

The row of characters along the left-hand edge of the main cartouche reads "tenshi Kanagaki Robun ki" ("tenshi" - roughly 'inserted text' - 塡詞 and "ki" - 'scribe' - 記 respectively), or approximately 'text written by Kanagaki Robun'.

Cartouches within the ground identify the individuals who are shown. The prints in this series do not have titles per se, and are usually identified by the names of the individuals shown. Some prints have more than one identification cartouche; in such cases, both are given in the individual print entries below.

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

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