This page attempts to catalog all known prints in Yoshitoshi’s series ‘Azumo no Nishiki Ukiyo Kōdan (東 錦 浮世 稿談 – Tales of the Floating World on Eastern Brocade)’.
It dates from relatively early in Yoshitoshi’s career, when he was about twenty-eight, almost two decades before his well-known masterpieces such as his great series “One Hundred Aspects of the Moon” (1885-1892), and “New Forms of Thirty-Six Ghosts” (often called simply “Thirty-Six Ghosts”) (1889-1892).
The series contains popular stories (kōdon) of drama and violence by various story tellers, as retold by Kanagaki Robun ( 假名垣 魯文, although the name is now often written with the simplified first character 仮; 1829-1894), a native of Edo who was a writer of humorous and satirical fiction. His focus on the the contortions of Japanese society as it modernized in the Meiji period was likely a bond with Yoshitoshi, who was also interested in the challenges to Japanse society during this turbulent period.
The red cartouche in the upper corner contains the series title at the top, and at the bottom (according to Keyes), “[t]he name[] of the story teller”. (We are in the process of reading all these names, and much progress has been made, but finalizing the readings, and adding the information to this page, will be left until other higher-priority tasks on the site are completed. One complicating factor is that black characters do not reproduce well against a red background in images, so high-quality images are needed before these names can be read.)
The row of characters along the left-hand edge of the main cartouche reads “tenshi Kanagaki Robun ki” (“tenshi” – roughly ‘inserted text’ – 塡詞 and “ki” – ‘scribe’ – 記 respectively), or approximately ‘text written by Kanagaki Robun’.
Cartouches within the ground identify the individuals who are shown. The prints in this series do not have titles per se, and are usually identified by the names of the individuals shown. Some prints have more than one identification cartouche; in such cases, both are given in the individual print entries below.
Technical details
- Dates: 1867 (9) – 1868 (2)
- Size: Ōban
- Signed: Ikkaisai Yoshitoshi hitsu
- Seal: Kiri
- Publishers: Various
- Masudaya Ginjirō
- Ōmiya Kyūsuke
- Sanoya Tomigorō
- Sekiguchi Gyokumeidō
- Yamashirō-ya Jinbei (Yamajin)
- Block carvers: Hōriki Ei Katada Chō, Hōriko Fusajirō, Hōriko Hatsu
Previous cataloguings
One of the first attempts to enumerate this series was in Keyes’ thesis:
Roger. S. Keyes, "Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 1839-1892", Cinncinnati, 1982
where it appears as series #202; he listed 23 prints in the series. The next listing was in:
Eric van den Ing, Robert Schaap, "Beauty and Violence: Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi 1839-1892", Havilland, Eindhoven, 1992
where it appears as series #20 (pp. 105-107); they listed a further 4 prints (using Keyes’ reference numbers for the first 23), making 27 in total. We have discovered an additional 19 prints so far, making 46 prints in all at the moment.
We use the Keyes/B+V numbers for the first 27, and have numbered the rest in the order in which we discovered them; the prints in the series do not appear to have any numbers on them.
This page (and list) is not necessarily complete; there may be yet be other prints for which we have not yet found an image. If you know of any prints from this series which aren’t listed here, or have either i) information about any errors on the page, ii) better images than the ones below, or iii) missing information about individual prints (e.g. publisher, exact date, and especially the reading of any text which is not read out here), please let us know.
Also, better images of the following prints: #7, #15 would also be most useful. Of these, #15 is probably the most-needed.
