芳年YOSHITOSHI.NETTHE WOODBLOCK PRINT ARCHIVE

THE SERIES COLLECTION · KEYES 289

Biographies of Valiant Drunken Tigers

竸勢醉虎傳

Keisei suikoden
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi · 1874

1874PUBLICATION DATES
23 entriesIN THIS CATALOGUE
TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI · 月岡芳年
Oyauchi Ryūgo(rō)
#1 Oyauchi Ryūgo(rō)
竸勢醉虎傳

About the Series

This page attempts to catalog all known prints in Yoshitoshi's series 'Keisei suikoden (竸勢 醉虎傳 - Biographies of Valiant Drunken Tigers)'. (The title is now usually written with the simplified characters 競, 酔 and 伝; 競勢 酔虎伝.)

The title has one of the written/spoken puns common in Japanese woodblock prints: although the second word is pronounced "suikoden" (the same as the well-known 'Water Margin' tale), it is written with different kan-ji, hence has a very different meaning.

It dates from the middle of Yoshitoshi's career, when he was about thirty-five. It thus dates from a little over 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).

Publication details
  • Dates: 1874 (2)
  • Size: Ōban
  • Signed: Taiso Yoshitoshi
  • Seals: Unread
  • Publisher: Masadaya
  • Block carvers: Kataka Hori Chō, Horikō Tomikochi
Catalogue references and numbering

Print numbers retain the original Keyes-based order. The duplicate Kubota Manji entry formerly numbered #16 has been omitted. The remaining print numbers are unchanged.

One of the first attempts to enumerate this series was 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
where it appears as series #289; he listed 18 prints in the series. The next listing was in: 
	Eric van den Ing, Robert Schaap, "Beauty and Violence: Japanese
		Prints by Yoshitoshi 1839-1892",
		Havilland, Eindhoven, 1992
where it appears as series #24 (pg. 50, 112); they listed a further 3 prints (using Keyes' reference numbers for the first 18), making 21 in total. We have found an additional two prints, making 23 in total so far.

We use the Keyes/B+V numbers for the first 21, and have numbered the rest in the order in which we discovered them. The prints in the series do not appear to have any numbers on them.

This page (and list) is by no means 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, iii) missing information about individual prints (e.g. publisher, exact date), or iv) images for any of the prints which we are missing images for, please let us know.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Guy Pepermans, who provided an image of print #19.

芳年YOSHITOSHI.NETTHE WOODBLOCK PRINT ARCHIVE

Display image and catalogue: Yoshitoshi.net

Open permanent print page ↗