Tomoe Gozen – Woman Warrior By toshidama It is so easy to miss what’s going on in Japanese prints – sometimes just looking hard isn’t enough. There are two prints on this page, one is of a female warrior battling a man and the other is of a male warrior doing the same thing. Surprisingly – they [...]
Japan tourism and culture: Hakone Jinja, historical treasure museum and Mount Fuji James Jomo and Lee Jay Walker Modern Tokyo Times Hakone is a very popular tourist destination because you have so many places to visit and the views of Mount Fuji in certain locations are extremely stunning. Throughout Hakone you have many museums and [...]
Otokodate – Black Sheep of the Floating World By toshidama It’s easy to use a phrase over and over without ever really thinking about it or explaining it in any great detail. The word Otokodate is one such instance and I am aware that we use it at the gallery without clearly defining it. Otokodate [...]
Japanese tourism and art: Hakone and Hokusai Lee Jay Walker Modern Tokyo Times Katsushika Hokusai was a sublime Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker and his art had many faces and styles. However, when you think about the stunning nature of Hakone then the refined art of Hokusai springs to mind. Alternatively, if you close [...]
There – Not There – Woodblock Prints and the Work of Paul Morrison By toshidama In ukiyo-e, as in all prints produced from blocks, there is little margin for hesitation – no grey area for the artist to prevaricate. In relief printing at its most basic, there is only the presence of a mark (black or [...]
The Death Rock (Japanese Mythology) By Ledia Runnels Mysterious Japan You sit in the garden near the Palace in the once Imperial City of Kyoto. It is a beautiful spring day. In fact you are fortunate to have planned your visit to Japan the very day the cherry blossoms are at the most glorious. A [...]
The Japanese woodblock print artist Nana Shiomi By toshidama From time to time we like to look at the connections between traditional ukiyo-e and contemporary art. One contemporary Japanese woodblock artist of particular note is Nana Shiomi whose work in extending the reach of the medium and embedding traditional iconography and motifs in the contemporary mien [...]
The Pachyderm in the Room – Kuniyoshi’s Elephant By toshidama The elephant has long presented artists of all genres with a problem. The elephant is exotic, clearly enormous and spectacular but in captivity it lacks the dynamism, the heroism that its reputation suggests. Very few artists have successfully represented the elephant and because of the [...]
Utagawa Toyokuni and ukiyo-e: a modest artist who was graceful Lee Jay Walker Modern Tokyo Times Utagawa Toyokuni was born in 1769 and died in 1825 and he gave a rather negative comment about his artistic merits. Indeed, many individuals have wide opinions about Toyokuni and he himself reportedly commented that “My pictures – they [...]
The Japanese Zodiac – Animals in Ukiyo-e by toshidama The subject of the Japanese (Chinese) zodiac would take many hundreds of pages accurately to describe. It is a complex system of Buddhist symbolism, planetary observation and Imperial obeisance. The Japanese Zodiac and calendar were introduced from China in the sixth century. The Imperial court invited [...]
Japanese Prints In Context – Kunisada Warriors By toshidama It’s a fact of history that it is not always the person that first conceived something that is remembered so much as the person who made it famous. In ukiyo-e, this is particularly true of one of the nineteenth century’s most lasting and noticeable genres – the [...]
Boys and Girls… Gender, Kabuki and Japanese Prints By toshidama Japanese prints can be confusing territory for those seeking certainty. Artists of the ukiyo-e revelled in “look and compare” pictures or mitate-e as it is called. Borrowing from the traditions of poetry, mitate-e pictures play ironically with the knowingness of the audience, substituting contemporary actors for [...]
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