Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) Sagas of Beauty and Bravery (Biyû Suikoden): Yume no Chokichi, 1866. Oban.
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This unusual chuban series (Yoshitoshi hardly ever worked on the small scale), takes its lead from the very famous series of the Hundred and Eight Heroes of the Suikoden by Kuniyoshi. Kuniyoshi’s series represents individual figures from stories of the semi-historical Chinese novel, Suikoden ("Shuihu zhuan" in Chinese). The narrative tells of the adventures of a band of 108 rebels who sought refuge in the margins of Liangshan Marsh. These rebel warriors sought to protect the poor and downtrodden, very much like Robin Hood’s band of outcasts in medieval England. They were eventually to win both favour and pardon for heroically defending the country from invasion. As with so much ukiyo-e, the story itself is apocryphal; the characters are invented wholly or else dramatically embroidered and it is the ‘idea’ of the series and its astonishing and inventive power that carries Kuniyoshi’s vision. Japan was, even as early as the 1820’s, aware that it was living on borrowed time. The hermetic, enclosed, feudal culture of the centuries-old shogunate was decadent and crumbling. Only two years after this print was made, Yoshitoshi was to witness first hand the slaughter of a civil war battle at Ueno Park between loyalists and modernists.
Yoshitoshi’s version veers madly from this earlier model in as much as the figures he represents are drawn from all over Japanese culture… kabuki, folklore, history etc. Many of the prints are of unattributed scenes with kabuki actors, such as I suspect, is this. The scene depicts a character - Yume no Chokichi - fighting with the great toad-magic hero Jiraiya. Jiraiya is out of the frame of the picture and so we see Chokichi, swaying wildly on a rooftop of the the Sanmon Gate of the Kokubunji Temple at the foot of Mount Kurohime. As birds fly over, he wields a kusarigama - a stick with a chain - at his unseen enemy.
A very good series, the print is in fine condition, trimmed to the image, unbacked. Colour and impression are very good.
Publisher: Kinkyu.
24 x 18 cm.
