Fushiga is a genre of ukiyo-e woodblock prints depicting satirical pictures accompaniyed with text. [1] [2] [3] Fushiga prints usually depicted ordinary people in their everyday activities, with their exclamations written next to them, and not celebrities or famous landscapes. Fushiga relied more on text than on the image, and because of that was "virtually ignored by Western critics of the print". [2]
The genre emerged as an attempt at criticism of the government and social situations of the late Tokugawa regime in the 1860s, [4] many prints were very political and were not signed. "An ordinary-looking picture of Edoites flying kites could thus be transformed into a sharp commentary on inflation, with the kites bearing the names of basic commodities, and the text complaining about how things are going up and up." [2]
Kyu Hyun Kim writes that some prints, for example Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Prince Minamoto Yorimitsu Encounters the Earth Spider Demon (1843), were "purported to depict mythical heroes from kabuki plays, who were in fact identifiable to contemporaries as satirical representations of real-life shogunate officials and domain lords". [4] Another example is The great battle between the fruit and vegetable army and the fish troops, 1859 by Utagawa Hirokage, that appears to be:
at first glance to be commenting on the rising price of fruit and vegetables and the falling price of fish following the cholera epidemic of 1858. However, the back of the print in the Waseda University Collection displays “identification tags” matched to various anthropomorphic foodstuffs, informing the reader how each funnily-dressed vegetable, fruit, or marine animal represents a specific domain or daimyo. The commanding officer of the fruit and vegetables is shown to have a head made of a tangerine, the “national product” of Kii domain, from which the fourteenth Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi hailed. A winter melon represents Ii Naosuke, his finger branded with a Hikone domain crest. Daikon, the large Japanese turnip, is a special product of Owari domain. The opposing army of marine creatures is headed by a grampus, signifying Hitotsubashi (Tokugawa) Yoshinobu, flanked by Abe Masahiro as a puffer-fish, fugu in Japanese (a pun on Abe's fief, Fukuyama), and Hotta Masayoshi as a sea bass (the sea bass’s sleeves carry cherry blossom [sakura] designs, a take on Hotta’s fief, Sakura). A gigantic octopus shooting off a beam of light from the depth of the ocean like some monster from a 1950s science fiction film is Tokugawa Nariaki (apparently one of the products the Mito domain was known for was octopus, according to Minami Kazuo). [4]
There were attempts by the shogunate to limit and control such prints, but they were not very successful. [2] Government sanctioned and punished for the production of such prints. For example Utagawa Kuniyoshi was arrested and interrogated for his print Kitai na meii nanbyō chiryō (The Rare and Brilliant Doctor Treats Tough Diseases, 1850), "features a female doctor named Kogarashi treating a motley crew of patients with comically exaggerated illnesses. One of them is a nearsighted old man, who represents Abe Masahiro, grumbling, 'I can see the tip of my nose, but nothing far away.'" [4] Producers were fined, the prints confiscated and destroyed. [4]
Utagawa Kuniyoshi was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting. He was a member of the Utagawa school.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was a Japanese printmaker.
Tokugawa Iesada was the 13th shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He held office for five years from 1853 to 1858. He was physically weak and was therefore considered by later historians to have been unfit to be shōgun. His reign marks the beginning of the Bakumatsu period.
Toriyama Sekien, real name Sano Toyofusa, was a scholar, kyōka poet, and ukiyo-e artist of Japanese folklore. Born to a family of high-ranking servants to the Tokugawa shogunate, he was trained by Kanō school artists Kanō Gyokuen and Kanō Chikanobu, although he was never officially recognized as a Kanō school painter.
Hotta Masayoshi was the 5th Hotta daimyō of the Sakura Domain in the Japanese Edo period, who served as chief rōjū in the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa shogunate, where he played an important role in the negotiations of the Ansei Treaties with various foreign powers.
Kawanabe Kyōsai was a Japanese painter and caricaturist. In the words of art historian Timothy Clarke, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".
Toyohara Kunichika was a Japanese woodblock print artist. Talented as a child, at about thirteen he became a student of Tokyo's then-leading print maker, Utagawa Kunisada. His deep appreciation and knowledge of kabuki drama led to his production primarily of yakusha-e, which are woodblock prints of kabuki actors and scenes from popular plays of the time.
Abe Masahiro was the chief senior councilor (rōjū) in the Tokugawa shogunate of the Bakumatsu period at the time of the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry on his mission to open Japan to the outside world. Abe was instrumental in the eventual signing of the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854. Abe did not sign the treaty himself or participate in the negotiations in person; this was done by his plenipotentiary Hayashi Akira. His courtesy title was Ise-no-kami.
Toyohara Chikanobu, better known to his contemporaries as Yōshū Chikanobu (楊洲周延), was a Japanese painter and printmaker who was widely regarded as a prolific woodblock artist during the Meiji epoch.
Mito was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Hitachi Province in modern-day Ibaraki Prefecture.
Kobayashi Kiyochika was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, best known for his colour woodblock prints and newspaper illustrations. His work documents the rapid modernization and Westernization Japan underwent during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and employs a sense of light and shade called kōsen-ga inspired by Western art techniques. His work first found an audience in the 1870s with prints of red-brick buildings and trains that had proliferated after the Meiji Restoration; his prints of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 were also popular. Woodblock printing fell out of favour during this period, and many collectors consider Kobayashi's work the last significant example of ukiyo-e.
Kuwana-juku was the forty-second of the fifty-three stations (shukuba) of the Tōkaidō connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It was located in former Ise Province in what is now part of the city of Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, Japan.
Makino Tadamasa was a Japanese daimyō of the Edo period.
Ukiyo-e artists may be organized into schools, which consist of a founding artist and those artists who were taught by or strongly influenced by him. Artists of the Osaka school are united both stylistically and geographically. Not all of these artists designed woodblock prints, and some ukiyo-e artists had more than one teacher, and others are not known to be associated with any particular school.
Utagawa Yoshitora was a designer of ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints and an illustrator of books and newspapers who was active from about 1850 to about 1880. He was born in Edo, but neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. However, he was the oldest pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi who excelled in prints of warriors, kabuki actors, beautiful women, and foreigners (Yokohama-e). He may not have seen any of the foreign scenes he depicted.
Yokohama-e are Japanese woodblock prints depicting non-East Asian foreigners and scenes in the port city of Yokohama.
Sano Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Shimotsuke Province, Japan. It was centered in what is now part of the city of Sano, Tochigi. Sano was ruled through most of its history by a junior branch of the Hotta clan.
Ōtsu-e was a folk art that began in 17th century Japan and depended on the busy road traffic of the trade route through the district where it was produced in Ōtsu, near Kyoto. With the coming of railways, especially of the Tōkaidō line in the late 19th century, it largely disappeared.
Musha-e (武者絵) is a type a Japanese art that was developed in the late 18th century. It is a genre of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing technique, and represents images of warriors and samurai from Japanese history and mythology.
Ōmi-Miyagawa Domain was a Fudai feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan. It was located in southeastern Ōmi Province, in the Kansai region of central Honshu. The domain was centered at Miyagawa jin'ya, located in what is now the city of Nagahama in Shiga Prefecture.
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