Taiso Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892) New Forms of the Thirty-six Ghosts: Minamoto no Yorimitsu attacks the Earth Spider, 1892. Oban.
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On of the most enduring and startling images in Japanese woodblock art, this extraordinary print by the artist Yoshitoshi must have spawned the contemporary genre of manga and related supernatural graphic culture almost by itself. The invention here is outstanding, the imagination and the daring to carry it through fantastic. The print comes from the last woodblock series that Yoshitoshi was to undertake and was unfinished at his death, with some of the designs in fact printed posthumously.
The series is a sophisticated overview of the themes of Japanese supernatural folk tales and mythology. Not strictly speaking ghosts, and there is a mistranslation here. The word used in the title for ‘ghost’, kai, actually means strange, monstrous or weird, so the subjects include demons and monsters as well as the spirits of dead humans returning from hell to haunt the living.
The story pictured here derives from the tales of the historical character, Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948 – 1021), also known as Minamoto no Raiko. Raiko is struck down with a mysterious illness whilst tracking a giant demon skull. A priest (sometimes attendant) visits him every night with medicine. One of Yorimitsu’s retainers becomes suspicious and resolves to spend the night in his master’s chamber. He falls asleep night after night, being enchanted by the demon. One night, he digs a sword into his thigh and stays awake, witnessing the transformation of the priest from human into terrifying, giant arachnid, by use of a mirror. The following night, Yorimitsu stays awake and attacks the spider which escapes. His retainers track the creature to a cave where they slaughter it, whereupon thousands of spiderlings flee from its belly.
Yoshitoshi pictures the moment that the demon transforms. We see (to our eyes perhaps), the comical half state of the creature which is both giant spider and yet still wears a ruffled costume from its human form. Raiko reaches for his concealed sword with which he will fatally wound the demon. The backstory is complicated. The kabuki drama of the story was wildly popular in Edo. In that telling, the spider is a seductive female. I’m fairly sure that Yoshitoshi has pictured this as a bedroom scene. There is something of the ‘vamp’… the femme-fatale about Tsuchigumo (the name for the Earth Spider) and there is of course the oddly inappropriate night gown-like drawing of the vestments.
The print is a true original. The design of the spider draws on other artist’s designs from earlier in the century, notably those of his teacher, Kuniyoshi and his contemporary, Kunichika. The name actually refers to a race of cave dwelling people of the northern Japanese mountains, exterminated during the 11th century. Folklore appears to have exaggerated their physical attributes and wickedness. The spider illustrated here is the standard depiction of spiders throughout ukiyo-e, which given the prevalence of spiders in Japan, it is surprising how unlike an actual spider the creatures of ukiyo-e are! (There is as I suggest, an element of a kabuki performance in the scene, and we are looking into the half world of stage and fantasy.) The name transfers at some point to a mythical giant ground dwelling spider that occurs frequently in Japanese demonology.
Although this is a very familiar and widely reproduced image… almost a signifier of Japanese woodblock prints; it rarely comes to the market and it is in surprisingly few museum collections. The Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco has a copy, as does Los Angeles County Museum.
The series is designed within a worm-eaten, frayed border to give the impression of age. The series title runs in black in a cartouche across the top. This print is unusual in that the demon threat is made graphic and explicit, whereas in the bulk of the others in the series, Yoshitoshi shows the threat of violence or its aftermath.
The impression here is very good indeed. The colour is strong but some fading of the fugitive red has occurred. The image is full-sized; there is some trimming of the border but most of the artist and publisher information (then required by law) is in intact on the left-hand margin. There is delicate embossing to the figure of Raiko and evidence of the carefully chosen woodgrain in the centre of the understated spider web. A strong early edition of the print.
Published by Sasaki Toyokichi.
Carver: Hori Yo.
24cm x 36cm.
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