Back in March the Japan Society introduced us to prints by a Japanese artist who, despite living and working 150 years ago, is considered influential in the hotter-than-hot manga and anime scene of today.
Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection closes this weekend after three months of delighting visitors with its rich colors, precise detail, and outlandish sea creatures. Touted by The New York Times as "elegantly sumptuous" and "imaginatively extravagant," the color-woodblock prints in the collection offer stunning and vibrant views into the masterful mind of the artist.
The career of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) took off in the late 1820s with his series of rough-looking characters based on the Chinese novel The Water Margin. Other themes included "Birds and Beasts," "All the Famous Products of Land and Sea," kabuki actors, and comic prints featuring cats and octopi posing as humans.
While the collection includes prints from all of those series, the exhibit is also a lesson in the politics of Japan from the 1830s through the end of the Tokugawa shogunate (c. 1600-1868).
Kuniyoshi was subjected to the censorship of the times. Artists were not allowed to depict scenes of wealth, disrespect to authority, or sexually stimulating courtesans and geisha. So Kuniyoshi tapped into his creativity and masked his political subjects behind evil spiders, giant crabs, and warriors who weren't who they seemed.
In the print Japanese Warrior Kashiwade no Hanoshi Kills a Tiger in Korea, the text indicates the subject is Kashiwade, a 6th century warrior. However, the actual killer of the tiger was presumed to be Toyotomi Hideyoshi's general Kato Kiyomasa. It was a no-no for a print to contain references to warriors who lived after 1573, especially those connected to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) since Tokugawa annihilated Toyotomi's descendants.
"There is a sense in which censorship spurred Kuniyoshi's imagination, as he sought to circumvent the government bans," says Joe Earle, Director of Japan Society Gallery and the exhibit's organizer.
Kuniyoshi wasn't all about hidden references to figures in Japanese politics. He was actually an innovator in the woodblock printmaking industry. Because the width of the printing block was bound by the vertically cut cherry trees, Kuniyoshi developed the triptych format, arranging the motif on all three sheets. One brilliant example is Minamoto no Raiko and His Retainers Battle with the Earth Spider, a print in which a giant spider engages Yorimitsu, an ailing warrior, and his subjects in battle.
Kuniyoshi also pushed the boundaries of woodblock carving, creating unprecedented prints depicting driving rain and filled with tremendous detail. Each of the more than 130 prints – most of which are from the Arthur R. Miller Collection – is meticulously preserved so that the color and the details, from rain to faces on the backs of crabs, pop from the page.
Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection is part history lesson, part barometer of Japan's political climate of the day, part manga precursor. It is all exquisitely created, boldly rendered, and remarkably preserved.
Graphic Heroes, Magic Monsters: Japanese Prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the Arthur R. Miller Collection closes this Sunday, June 13.
The Japan Society is located at 333 E. 47th Street between First and Second Avenues
Admission: $12/$10 seniors and students/Free to Japan Society members and children under 16
Admission is free Friday night from 6:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m.
Gallery hours on Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.
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