This is the first monograph in English on the Meiji Era print-maker Yoshu Chikanobu (1838-1912), an artist about whom little has been previously written. He is not listed, for example, in the most general English-language source, the nine-volume "Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan." But that's a 1983 publication and Chikanobu's rise to fame and (according to the press release for this volume) his position as "one of the most collected artists among collectors of Japanese prints" is relatively recent.
In earlier publications, late Tokugawa and early Meiji print-makers used to be listed among "the decadents" and this included artists now as prominent as Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Keisai Eisen -- both of whom were among Chikanobu's teachers. In criticisms still earlier, the worth of even Ando Hiroshige was being questioned, and it will be remembered that Katsushika Hokusai prints were in the mid-19th-century apparently being used as packaging material for porcelain being sent to France. This at least is the anecdote accounting for later French enthusiasm for Japanese prints.
The enthusiasm continues, and perhaps one of the reasons for Chikanobu's becoming most collected is that there is still something to collect. Hokusai prints are rare and very expensive, but the work of the Meiji print-makers was, until recently, available and relatively cheap.