Mirror of Beauties Past and Present

It dates from the middle of Yoshitoshi's career, when he was about thirty-seven, and just recovering from a serious slump in his life. It dates from about a decade 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).

hime (meaning 'princess' or 'young noble-lady'), normally written with the character 姫, is written with other characters in many prints, characters which have the same sound, but a different meaning. Since many of the prints show women of other classes (e.g. courtesans), the title is usually translated with a word such as 'beauty' substituted for 'noble lady'.

This page (and list) is not necessarily complete; it 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, i) better images than the ones below, or iii) missing information about individual prints (e.g. publisher, exact date) please let us know.

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