Another beautiful edition de luxe from Hotei Publishing, this volume presents two series by Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), a late print artist often remembered for his fantastic images.
The first series, "One Hundred Tales of China and Japan" was completed in 1865 when Yoshitoshi was in his mid-20s but already an acknowledged master draughtsman. The second, "New Forms of Thirty-Six Strange Things," was completed 20 years later.
Both are filled with the fantastic beings that made Japanese prints so popular during Europe's fin de siecle. Ghosts, demons, giant toads and monstrous rats disport themselves on these pages and seek to both alarm and entertain.
Yoshitoshi was working at a time when his country was fast losing tradition -- the early Meiji Era. Like our present age, the past was disappearing rapidly and it was being publicly regretted, as it is now in our taste for violent manga, dystopian anime and horror films.
Late print artists all found uses for such sensational subjects as monsters and supernatural beings because these, in a way, suggested both an avenging past and a threatening future. Likewise (then as now) violence and torture were pictured both as warning and as gratification.
(Indeed, Yoshitoshi's torture scenes have given him something of a reputation. He even mixed glue with his red pigment to better suggest congealed blood. John Stevenson, however, says in his excellent commentary that singling out Yoshitoshi is unfair since such bloody scenes of cruelty were a part of the repertoire of all the late print makers -- it was an element in the pictorial dialect of the time.)
Late kabuki also insisted upon cruel and bloody violence, and Nanboku's notorious "Yotsuya Ghost Story" was again and again avidly illustrated by the print-makers, including Yoshitoshi. His depiction of the lovely Oiwa, soon to be made monstrous before being poisoned, nailed to a shutter and set afloat, however, shows her in pre-monster form with only her obi behaving a bit strangely.
Perhaps the reason for her pre-ghostly beauty is that Yoshitoshi always maintained that he knew exactly what ghosts looked like, since he had seen several. In 1871, the artist was on a sketching trip to Oiso when he saw a strange woman on the inn staircase. Later he heard that just such a woman had committed suicide in the room in which he was staying.
Again, nine years later, he had a similar ghostly experience. He had moved into a new house in Nezu. And who should be seated in the tokonoma, but the spirit of his devoted wife who had years before sold herself to a brothel in desperation over their poverty. He drew pictures of both of these ghostly ladies and thus acquired the knack of being able to spot the supernatural everywhere.
His vision of ghosts and monsters, however, changed and refined itself over the years. Of the first series, Stevenson writes that the artist is still under the strong influence of his teacher: "His heroes have Kuniyoshi's facial angles, intense -- even ferocious -- gazes under lowered eyelids, and knotted anatomically incorrect musculatures."
By the time of the second series, "the often round-shoulders and slightly stooped figures that he inherited from Kuniyoshi became more subtle and naturalistic. They became taller, more anatomically correct, and Westernized."
To us, now, the prints of this second series look Western indeed, but this is perhaps because Western artists (Mucha, for example) were so inspired by the thin lines, the pastel shades, and the detailed vegetation of the Japanese originals. To look at a late Yoshitoshi now is to think of l'art nouveau.
Another indication we read as Western is Yoshitoshi's "revelation of the inner psychology of his characters, which is probably his greatest contribution to ukiyo-e." Earlier masters tended to make everyone look the same. The people had ideal, "social" faces. Now, with Yoshitoshi and his contemporaries, they became real people in actual situations and not just actors and mannequins on a stage.
This new individuality lends a psychological interest to the prints and at the same time increases one's involvement with whatever tale is being illustrated. Though Hokusai's monsters may frighten more, and though Kuniyoshi's may disgust more thoroughly, Yoshitoshi's makes of both monsters and victims are something so human that even now we can gaze and understand.
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