ONE HUNDRED ASPECTS
OF THE MOON By Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
de anima
books
Copyright: De Anima Graphics & Books ISBN-13: 978-1532914287 ISBN-10: 1532914288 Cover: Claudio Hideki Kurahayashi Oshi-e art: Kiyomi Hatai Kurahayashi
2016 De Anima Graphics & Books São Paulo, SP - Brazil
ONE HUNDRED ASPECTS
OF THE MOON By Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
About The Work Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s Life and Career
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ONE HUNDRED ASPECTS
OF THE MOON By Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
de anima
books
T
suki Hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon) is a collection of large, moon-themed nishiki-e (multicolored woodblock prints) by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. This series is generally regarded today as Yoshitoshi’s greatest achievment. Many of the prints are masterpieces as good as anything ever done by any ukiyo-e artist. The 100 prints were published in batches by Akiyama Buemon between 1885 and 1892. They depict various aspects of the moon, drawing upon Japanese and Chinese anecdotes, historical events, and mythology, and relate to a wide range of subjects, including famous warriors, notable women, birds and animals, and goblins and ghosts. The sixth picture, for example, depicts the warlord Cao Cao (155–220), famous as the main character in Sanguozhi Tongsu Yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), gazing at a full moon on the night before the Battle of Red Cliffs. The fifty-seventh picture shows Murasaki Shikibu (born circa 978) at a mountain temple, deep in thought while looking at the moon. It is said that the idea for Genji Monogatari (The tale of Genji), came to Murasaki while she was looking at a full moon from a temple. This document is a folding book consisting of all 100 prints from Tsuki Hyakushi and two indexes that were created after the series was completed. It is believed to have been bound by its former owner. A preface that was written at the same time as the indexes were compiled is not included in the book. Scholars believe that the order of the pictures in the album does not follow the order in which they were published, but instead their order in the indexes, although there are some variations. 8
T
sukioka Yoshitoshi was an ukiyo-e artist from the school of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), active from the Bakumatsu (final years of the Shogunate) into the Meiji Period. He created a wide range of works, including bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women), fuzoku-ga (pictures of manners and customs), and pictures of historical and literary characters.
He was born in old Edo, in 1839. His father was a rich merchant who had bought his way into samurai status, but Yoshitoshi left home at the age of 3 to live with his uncle, a son-less pharmacist, who was very fond of his nephew. Yoshitoshi was originally named Owariya Yonejiro, and was given the name Yoshitoshi by his master Kuniyoshi, one of great masters of the Japanese woodblock print, to whom he was apprenticed at 11, in 1850. Although he was not seen as Kuniyoshi’s successor in his lifetime, he is now recognized as the chief pupil of Kuniyoshi. His career spanned two eras - the last years of the old feudal Japan, and the first years of the new modern Japan. Like many Japanese, while interested in the new things from the rest of the world, over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many outstanding things from the traditional Japan, among them the traditional woodblock print. His early work is full of extremely graphic violence and death, perhaps mirroring the lawlessness and violence of the Japan around him, which was simultaneously going through the breakdown of the feudal system imposed by the Tokugawa shoguns, as well as the impact of the West. During this period his fame grew, and by 1869 he was regarded as one of the best woodblock artists in Japan. Shortly thereafter, he ceased to receive comissions, perhaps because the public were tired of scenes of violence. By 1871, he became severely depressed, and his personal life became one of great turmoil, which was to continue sporadically until his death.
Yoshitoshi’s memorial portrait by Kanaki Toshikage 9
He lived in appalling conditions with his devoted mistress, Okoto, who sold off her clothes and possessions to support him. At one point they were reduced to burning the floor-boards from the house for warmth.
izing Japan. Yoshitoshi insisted on high standards of production, and helped save it temporarily from degeneracy. In 1880, he met another woman, a former Geisha with two children, Sakamaki Taiko. They were married in 1884, and while he continued to philander, her gentle and patient manner seems to have helped stabilize him.
His fortunes started to turn by 1873, when his mood improved, and he started to produce more prints. Newspapers sprung up in the modernization drive, and Yoshitoshi was hired to produced prints for one.
His last years were among his most productive, with his great series “One Hundred Aspects of the His financial condition was still precarious, Moon” (1885-1892), and “New Forms of Thirty-Six though, and in 1876, his mistress Okoto, in a ges- Ghosts” (often called simply “Thirty-Six Ghosts”) ture of devotion which is typically Japanese, but (1889-1892), as well as some masterful triptychs hard for us to understand, sold herself to a brothel of kabuki theatre actors and scenes. to help him. During this period he also cooperated with his With the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, in which the friend, the actor Danjuro, and others, in an atold feudal order made one last attempt to stop the tempt to save some of the traditional Japanese new Japan, newspaper circulation soared, and arts. woodblock artists were in demand, with Yoshitoshi most of all. The prints he did gave him public In his last years, his mental problems started to recognition, and the money was a help, but it was recur. In early 1891 he invited friends to a gathnot until 1882 that he was secure. ering of artists that turned out to be a delusion. After more symptoms, he was admitted to mental In late 1877, he took up with a new mistress, the hospital. He eventually left, in May 1892, but did geisha Oraku; like Okotu, she sold her clothes and not return home, instead renting rooms. possessions to support him, and when they separated after a year, she too hired herself out to a He died there three weeks later, on June 9, 1892, brothel. from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was only 53 years old. By this point, the woodblock industry was in severe straits. All the great woodblock artists of the During his life, he produced a large number of early part of the century, Hiroshige, Kunisada, and triptychs, and many series of prints, many of Kuniyoshi, had all died, and the wooblock print as great merit, including his two best-known, “Thiran art form was dying in the confusion of modern- ty-Six Ghosts” and the “One Hundred Aspects of 10
the Moon”. Other less-common ones are almost equally good, including “Yoshitoshi’s Finest Warriors”, “A Collection of Desires”, “Eight Elements of Honor” and “Thirty-Two Aspects of Customs and Manners” (the latter all series of bijin). While demand for his prints continued for a few years, eventually interest in him waned, both in Japan, and around the world. The canonical view in this period was that the generation of Hiroshige was really the last of the great woodblock artists, and more traditional collectors stopped even earlier, at the generation of Utamaro and Toyokuni. However, starting in the 1970’s, interest in him resumed, and reappraisal of his work has shown the quality, originality and genius of the best of it, and the degree to which he succeeded in keeping the best of the old Japanese woodblock print, while pushing the field forward by incorporating both new ideas from the West, as well as his own innovations.
Sources: J. Noel Chiappa Library of Congress 11
Cooling off at Shijō
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“Full moon on the tatami mats Shadows of the pine branches� Kikaku
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Inaba Mountain Moon
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The village of the Shi Clan on a moonlit night Nine-Dragon Tattoo from “The Water Margin”
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Moonlight patrol SaitĹ? Toshimitsu
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Rising moon over Mount Nanping Cao Cao
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“By now you must be near Komakata A cuckoo calls” Takao
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The Gion District
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Winter moon at Asano river
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Chang’e flies to the moon
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Mountain moon after rain Tokimune
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A glimpse of the moon Kaoyo
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Cassia-Tree Moon Wu Gang
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Moon at Chikubu Island Tsunemasa
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“On the coast at Kiyomi even the sky bars the Way The moon is blocked by the Miho pine groves�
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Dawn moon of the Shinto rites Festival on a hill
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Inamura promontory moon at daybreak
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Moon of Itsukushima A Muro courtesan
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An iron cauldron and the moon at night Kobuna no Gengo and Shimaya HanzĹ?
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Mount Yoshino midnight moon Iga no Tsubone
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Moon above the sea at Daimotsu bay Benkei
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The Moon of the Milky Way
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Moon of the pleasure quarters
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Shujaku Gate Moon Hakuga Sammi
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Takakura Moon Hasebe Nobutsura
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Moon of the enemy’s lair Prince Ousu
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Mount Jiming Moon Zi Fang
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Moon over theater district at dawn
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Moon and Smoke
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Mount Otowa Moon Bright God Tamura
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“How hopeless it is It would be better for me to sink beneath the waves Perhaps then I could see my man from moon capital� Ariko
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The moon’s inner vision Te no Yubai
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The cry of the fox
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Gravemaker Moon
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The moon at Ogurusu in Yamashiro
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Moon at Yamaki mansion Kagekado
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The moon through a crumbling window
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Kitayama Moon Toyohara Sumiaki
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“I listen to the sound of the cloth being pounded As the moon shines serenely And believe that there is someone else Who has not yet gone to sleep� Tsunenobu
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The Yūgao Chapter from “The Tale of Genji”
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Faith in the third-day moon Yukimori
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“Glimmers like bright snow and plum blossoms appear like reflected stars Ah! The golden mirror of the moon passes overhead as fragrance from the Jade Chamber fills the garden� Sugawara no Michizane
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“Usually I dislike a cloud sky Tonight I realize that a cloud sky makes me appreciate the light of the moon” Gen’i
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Mount Tobinosu dawn moon Toda Hanbei Shigeyuki
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“In the midst of glimmering whiteness among the night’s moon-shadows I part the snow and pluck plum blossoms” Fujiwara no Kinto
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“The full moon coming with a challenge to flaunt its beautiful brow” Fukami Jikyū
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Hazy-Night Moon Kumasaka
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“The night is still and a hundred flowers are fragrant in the Western Palace She orders the screen to be rolled up, regretting the passing of spring with the Yunhe across her lap she gazes at the moon The colors of the trees are hazy in the indistinct moonlight.� Wang Changling
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“I wish I had gone to bed immediately but now the night has passed and I watch the moon descend.� Akazome Emon
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Lady Gosechi
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Huai River Moon Wu Zixu
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Obon Festival Moon
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“Like reflections in the rice-paddies The faces of streetwalkers in the darkness are exposed by the autumn moonlight� Hitotose
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Sumiyoshi Full moon Lord Teika
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Moon at the helm of a boat Taira no Kiyotsune
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Seson Temple Moon Captain Yoshitaka
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Ishiyama Moon
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“In the moonlight under the trees a beautiful woman comes”
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Moon of enlightenment
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Joganden Moon Minamoto no Tsunemoto
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“Does the cuckoo also announce its name from above the clouds? Yorimasa Extemporizes I only bent my bow and the arrow shot itself�
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Gojō Bridge Moon
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Moon at Katada Bay SaitĹ? Kuranosuke
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Shizu Peak Moon Hideyoshi
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“As I look out into the vast expanse can this be the same moon that I saw rise in Kasuga behind Mount Mikasa?�
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The moon over the moor Yasumasa
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Received back into Moon Palace Bamboo cutter from “Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”
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Reading in moonlight Zi Lu
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Shinobugaoka Moon Gyokuensai
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“Did I ever imagine that as the clouds of the high autumn sky cleared I would view the moon through a bamboo lattice window� Hidetsugu
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“The bottom of the bucket which Lady Chiyo filled has fallen out The moon has no home in the water�
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Lunacy Unrolling letters
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Jade Rabbit Sun Wukong from “Journey to the West”
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Mount Miyaji Moon Moronaga
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Rainy Moon Kojima Takanori
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Moon of the filial son Ono no Takamura
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Moon at the Red Cliffs
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Moon of the Southern Sea
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Dawn moon and tumbling snow Kobayashi HeihachirĹ?
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Mount Ashigara Moon Yoshimitsu
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Cloth-Beating Moon Yugiri
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HĹ?rin Temple Moon Yokobue
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Moon of lonely house
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Kazan Temple Moon
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Moon of Kintoki Mountain
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“Pleasure is this To lie cool under the moonflower bower The man in his undershirt, the woman in her slip�
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“How noisy, the sound of insects calling in the meadow As for me, I make no sound but think of love�
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“Frost fills the camp and the autumn air is still lines of returning geese cross the moon of the third hour� Kenshin
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The Moon’s Four Strings Semimaru
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“Cherry blossom by the Sumida River boats fade from view in the gathering dusk at Sekiya as I view the moon� Mizuki Tatsunosuke
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Akechi Gidayu prepares himself for suicide
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A Buddhist monk receives Cassia seeds on a moonlit night
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Moon over ChĹ?fu Village
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“Since the crescent moon I have been waiting for tonight� Old Man
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The moon and the abandoned old woman
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Saga Moor Moon
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The Moon’s invention Hōzō Temple
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Musashi Plain Moon
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Monkey-Music Moon
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The Moon at High Tide
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“Holding back the night with its increasing brilliance the summer moon” Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s death poem