Art Book Review: Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon

Even if not so well known to Westerners as his predecessors, Hiroshige and Hokusai, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was arguably the greatest of Japanese ukioy-e artists.  Certainly it was largely through his artistry that the woodblock print form continued to flourish in the tumultuous era of the Meiji Restoration when important elements of the Japanese cultural tradition were discarded wholesale amid the rush to adopt everything Western.  If not for his efforts, ukiyo-e might in the late nineteenth century have existed only in a debased form devoid of the meticulous craftsmanship that had hitherto characterized it, if indeed it did not disappear altogether in favor of photography and other European methods of pictorial representation.

As might be expected, Yoshitoshi himself was a highly complex individual.  Born in the last years of the Edo Period, he was caught in the power struggle that enveloped Japan after the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.  The strife was not only political but cultural as well in that an entire way of life that had remained frozen during the centuries the country had been cut off from the outside world suddenly crumbled in the face of forced Westernization.  This radical change in direction had profound psychological consequences for the Japanese; they could no longer be sure of their own identity.  To continue to practice a traditional art form in such circumstances amounted to an act of defiance in its refusal to relinquish what was best in the Japanese spirit.

Yoshitoshi paid the price for his courage.  A student of the master printmaker Kuniyoshi, it took him years to achieve even a small amount of success.  During this time Yoshitoshi experienced such grueling poverty that his mistress Okoto sold herself to a brothel in order to support the artist with her earnings.  It was during this period that Yoshitoshi produced his most sensationalist work, such as the notorious Eimei nijūhasshūku ("Twenty-eight famous murders with verse").  Filled with violence and depictions of ghosts and demons, these works reflected well the discordant nature of the times.  Though Kuniyoshi had also treated this same supernatural subject matter (see, for example, Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre), nothing could compare with the savagery with which Yoshitoshi invested such works as Saijiro Kills Kohagi.  In the end it all became too much for Yohsitoshi and in 1872 he suffered the first of his two mental breakdowns.

Tsuki hayakushi ("One Hundred Aspects of the Moon") comes from a much later period in Yoshitoshi's life when he had finally achieved a measure of security and critical success and had settled down long enough to marry Sakamaki Taiko, a former geisha who already had two children.  Even though in 1885, the year he began work on Tsuki hayakushi, he produced his most horrific print, The Lonely House on Adachi Moor, the new series was far gentler and more contemplative in nature.  Filled with scenes from Japanese history and folklore and held together only by the constant motif of the moon, Tsuki hayakushi can be seen as an elegy to the old Japan that was on the point of vanishing forever.  Into it Yoshitoshi poured everything he had learned of art, and the resulting work is a masterpiece of technical skill.  Thus, at the very end of its existence, ukiyo-e achieved its greatest triumph.

John Stevenson's guide to Yoshitoshi's penultimate work - the artist suffered a second mental breakdown after completing the final images and then died of a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after having been released from the hospital - is a delight for anyone with an interest in Japanese art.  It begins with a long biographical essay that traces Yoshitoshi's life and development as an artist at the same time that it outlines the  historical events that occurred about him, a knowledge of which is essential to understanding any of the works created by this artist.  This section is profusely illustrated with small color reproductions of Yoshitoshi's most important works before beginning the present series.  There follows a short essay on the publication of the series and the technical details of its production along with a timeline of Japanese history and even a map showing the locations of the artwork's settings.  After this comes the catalog itself.  Each of the prints is exquisitely reproduced in large format on its own page.  Facing each is the story the print illustrates and detailed attention is paid to the iconography contained within it.  Stevenson has a scholarly knowledge of his subject and great erudition, but his style is never pedantic.  It's obvious throughout the book that he has sincere affection for Yoshitoshi and very much enjoys relating the stories behind each of his prints.  As a result, Stevenson's writing is thoroughly intelligible, even when dealing with the most arcane matters, and makes Japanese history come vibrantly alive for the reader.

As for the prints themselves, my favorite is one entitled Genji yugao no maki that illustrates a particularly poignant episode from Murasaki's classic Genji monogatari.  It should be noted that the coloring of the print in Stevenson's book is much more subtle than in many of the examples shown online.  That might mean that they are from later impressions when production standards were not as high.  Stevenson generally chose the earliest impressions available for reproduction in his book.  Another coloring change, usually in bright oranges turned brown, came about as a result of oxidation of the ink pigments over the years.