Ichiyusai Kuniyoshi

A word about the original Japanese edition These plates illustrated a woodblock edition on the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi by the famous print artist Kuniyoshi. The drawings were done and printing started in 1855, a few years before Kuniyoshi's death in 1861. However, the 90th volume was not finished until 1884, probably due to the enormous amount of work involved in hand cutting about 7000 pages on woodblocks. As there are numerous works in English detailing Hideyoshi's life, no attempt was made to translate the historical text. The captions were translated by Yasu Kizu from the inscritptons on the pictures Apparently the artist selected episodes to illustrate, for their pictorial possiblitites without considering their relative importance. Many are very trivial sidelights, not without interest but of no historical value. Others cover famous battles. The subject matter of the pictures is primarily military, and an amazing accuracy of detail in the depiction of armor, weapons, family crests, interiors, shows that the artist had spent his life among the scenes he was drawing and had a photographic memory for detail. Costumes, armor, and weapons are correct for the peroiod. The problem of reproducing from woodblocks were considerable as each picture spread across two pages and had to be rejoined. Poor inking of the original block required much retouching on negatives. Pictures are reduced 9% to fit on a standard size printing paper. Historical sketch of the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi-born 1536, died 1598. The plates 1-606.… (meer)