SNOWY NIGHT LEGNED: By Yumeji Takehisa (1884 – 1934) Date c. 1910 – 1930.

Snowy Night Legend by Yumeji Takehisa (1884 – 1934) Date c. 1910 – 1930.

Yumeji Takehisa has been considered as the main figure who propelled “Taisho romanticism.”. The dreamy, fragile looking girls Yumeji invented in his works were so popular during the period of 1900 -1930 that they became the cultural icon of the Taisho /early Showa eras. Many artists imitated this "Yumeji-look" in order to take advantage of Yumeji’s popularity. Even today, he has been one of the most beloved artists in Japan. In addition to his work as an artist, he was also a writer and a poet.

He was born in a small village where his father Kikuzo worked as a sake brewer and today the family's home stands as a museum open to the public. As a child he was a passionate drawer. While attending a high school in Kobe, which was affiliated to the University of Waseda, he discovered his fascination for different and exotic things. At that time he started writing short stories and poems as well as creating illustrations for a magazine. When his parents decided to move to the south of Kyushu Island, Yumeji Takehisa wanted to go to Tokyo; however, his parents instead sent him to the private university of Waseda where he made a lot of friends. Shusui Kotoku (1871 - 1911), a famous socialist and anarchist, was one of them. At the age of 19 Yumeji Takehisa began to be engaged in portraiture.

At the age of 23 Yumeji Takehisa married Tamaki Kishi who, much to his advantage, ran an art store; however after only two years they were divorced. Tamaki was his major model and the reason why he turned to bijin-ga, a type of Japanese art which is about beautiful women. Traditionally most Japanese woodblock artists make bijin-ga - images of beautiful women - sooner or later during their career. Many women of whom Yumeji Takehisa fell in love posed for him and became his lovers.

In 1916 Yumeji Takehisa became chief illustrator of Shin-Shojo (Fashionable Girl) and of Fujin no tomo (Women's Friend) magazines. Later on he restarted making illustrations for the Kodomo no kuni (Children Land) magazine.

In 1923 his further career was brought to a halt by the great Kanto earthquake. Most of his woodblocks were destroyed Yumeji Takehisa had to restart from the beginning. He worked very hard and at last in 1931 he was able to make a journey to the U.S., Germany and Italy in order to show his work. But it was his last trip. In 1933 he returned to Japan because of a serious disease. Yumeji Takehisa died in the sanitorium of Fujimi Hiland in 1934 and was buried in Tokyo.

Being active in the hanga (Japanese for "print") movement, Yumeiji Takehisa was influenced by modern Western art, out of which a new style developed: "Taisho romanticism". Takehisa became one of its major exponents - mainly in the field of color woodblocks. He filled the decorative element of this style with a melancholic, poetic atmosphere which formed a beautiful harmony with the charm of beautiful women.

The minimalistic, sometimes naive compositions made Yumeji Takehisa one of the most popular artists in Japan of his time. After his journeys to the United States of America and to Europe the Western influence became more dominant in his style, with the traditional style of the Japanese woodblock being more and more replaced by expressionism, abstraction and simplification.

ONE HUNDRED FACES - GOSSIP, STUTTERER: By Kobayashi Kiyochika

One Hundred Faces - Gossip, Stutterer

Kobayashi Kiyochika made the compilation of humorous gestures and faces titled “Shinban Sanju-ni So” (New Thirty-two Faces). Because of the popularity of the series, he made additional designs and combined them into one series, “Tsuika Hyaku Men So” (Addition; One Hundred Faces).

From left top to right bottom: “Mimi Komori” (whisper, gossip). “Domori” (Stutterer). “Tohmi” (Looking far away, Oh so beautiful...). “Karashi ga kiita” (Very effective mustard. Wow, so spicy!).

Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林 清親 September 10, 1847- November 28, 1915) was a Japanese ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Meiji period,born at a time when the old order of the Shogunate was already on shaky grounds and an adolescent when Western civilization rolled over Japan. For him, life became like a small boat in a rough sea

He was born into a family of lower-ranked samurai that served the Tokugawa family — something which a hundred years earlier or even fifty years earlier would have been a very pleasant thing; but in Japan, times were changing.

In 1853 a U.S. Naval fleet of black iron ships — unknown before in Japan — anchored off the Japanese coast near Uraga. One year later in 1854, Japan was forced to open its borders for commercial relations with the United States in the Treaty of Kanagawa. This was the end of the old order. From then on, things changed too rapidly for a country that had sealed off its borders for 250 years.

Soon skirmishes broke out between the Loyalists — supporters of the old (Edo Period) order, mainly the samurai class who saw their century-old privileges going down the drain — and the promoters of the new order. The enemies of the Shogun rallied around the Emperor, who had resided in Kyoto since 1192 as a purely ceremonial figurehead — a toothless tiger.

But now, the tiger began to wake up and to show his teeth after nearly 700 years of subjugation by the Shogunate, which had exercised the real power in the country. Several fierce battles were fought between the two camps. The most bloody and the decisive one was the Battle of Ueno in which 2000 men of the Shogunate troops were badly defeated. The last Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu resigned in 1868.

Kobayashi Kiyochika had been fighting on the side of the Shogunate. He survived that time, the Bakumatsu, unharmed; but with the establishment of the new Meiji era under the rule of the Emperor Meiji, he found himself, in effect, a ronin — a lordless samurai. In the beginning he tried to survive by doing odd jobs. Later, in 1875, he tried his luck as a self-taught painter.

During that time, he happened to meet  Charles Wirgman, an English painter, cartoonist and correspondant for a British newspaper in Yokohama. Kobayashi studied art with him for a short period. Also at that time, he met Shimooka Renjo, a photographer, from whom he learned the principles of photography.

The following year, 1876, Kobayashi Kiyochika created his first woodblock prints — scenes from Tokyo. Although his prints were basically kept in traditional Japanese style, Kiyochika used Western elements like perspective, the effect of light and the graduations of shadows, having read about the French impressionists and seen photographs of their works in newspapers.

In the early 1880s, Kiyochika's style became a bit more traditional. He also turned to satirical cartoons and illustrations for newspapers and magazines. During the Sino-Japanese war he made about 80 war prints. War prints were like a last commercial resurgence of the old ukiyo-e business. Kobayashi's war prints are regarded as among the best in this genre, with a masterly play on the effects of light.

In 1894, Kiyochika established his own art school. One of his students was Tsuchiya Koitsu who stayed in his master's home for 19 years. Today Kobayashi is considered as the last master of the “old” ukiyo-e. But he was more than that. He was able to combine traditional ukiyo-e with modern Western style and thus showed a new direction for a subsequent generation of young artists like Hasui Kawase or Hiroshi Yoshida.

Despite his efforts, he could not stop the commercial decline of ukiyo-e, but he did pave the way for a new renaissance of the Japanese print - the Shin Hanga movement.

WELCOME TO "A TASTE FOR UKIYO-E"

Welcome to "A Taste for Ukiyo-e"

Ukiyo-e (浮世絵, literally “pictures of the floating world). is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced from the 17th through the present century, featuring motifs of landscapes, legends, tales from history, Noh and Kabuki theater, beautiful women, animals, and the pleasure quarters. Ukiyo-e is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan; indeed, it has come to be used commonly to denote any type of Japanese block print.

Usually the word ukiyo is literally translated as “floating world” in English, referring to a concept of an transitory world, impermanent, fleeting beauty and a realm of entertainments (Kabuki, courtesans, geisha) removed from the responsibilities of the mundane, everyday world; “pictures of the floating world”; thus, ukiyo-e are considered as a genre unto themselves.

The novelist contemporary to the time period, Asai Ryōi, in his Ukiyo monogatari (浮世物語, Tales of the Floating World, circa. 1661, provides some insight into the concept of the floating world:

... Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; ... refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world...

The art form rose to great popularity in the metropolitan culture of Edo (Tokyō) during the second half of the 17th century, originating with the single-color works of Hishikawa Moronobu in the 1670s. At first, only India ink was used, then some prints were manually colored with a brush, but in the 18th century Suzuki Harunobu developed the technique of polychrome printing to produce nishiki-e.

Ukiyo-e were affordable because they could be mass-produced. They were mainly meant for townsmen, who were generally not wealthy enough to afford an original painting. The original subject of ukiyo-e was city life, in particular activities and scenes from the entertainment district. Beautiful courtesans, bulky sumo wrestlers, and popular actors would be portrayed while engaged in appealing activities. Later on, landscapes also became popular. Political subjects, and individuals above the lowest strata of society (courtesans, wrestlers and actors) were not sanctioned in these prints but frequently appeared in them. Sex also was not a sanctioned subject, but continually appeared in ukiyo-e shunga prints.