YOSHITOSHI. 100 Ansichten des Mondes. Authentischer japanischer Holzschnitt. Ukiyo-e - Japan - Meiji Periode (1868-1912)

TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI (1839–1892)
Titel: 世尊寺の月 少将義孝 — Sesonji no tsuki, Shōshō Yoshitaka

Series: Tsuki Hyakushi (月百姿) — One Hundred Aspects of the Moon; Stevenson no. 33
Date: Meiji 19 (1886) — red date cartouche 御届明治十九年六月五日 printed in the left margin
Publisher: Akiyama Buemon (秋山武右衛門)
Format: Ōban tate-e — approx. 36 × 24.5 cm
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome (nishiki-e)
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Condition

Very good impression, and the colour retains its full intensity — embellished with textile pattern burnishing that flashes when tilted to light. Overall excellent. The sheet carries an album backing.
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The Scene

A young courtier sits alone on the grass in an oversized kariginu of pale blue patterned with roundels of stylised blossom, purple trousers spread beneath him, a stiff black eboshi on his head and his eyebrows plucked and repainted in the Heian manner. Behind him a bare tree and a stand of pines climb a grey hillside; a pale sun — or moon — hangs just above the ridge. He is not looking at it. He is looking at nothing, and that is the whole design.

The figure is Fujiwara no Yoshitaka (954–974), Captain of the Right Bodyguards, and one of the finest young poets of the mid-Heian court. He was composing linked verse at palace gatherings by the age of twelve; he is said to have withdrawn from poetry to spare his elder brother the rivalry, and turned instead to Buddhist practice and the Lotus Sutra. He died at twenty in the smallpox epidemic of 974, on the same day as his brother — the Ōkagami records that one died in the morning and the other in the evening, and dwells on the mother left behind. His single poem in the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, No. 50, is a morning-after verse of startling directness: having thought his life worth nothing for her sake, he now finds himself wishing it long.
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The Series — Yoshitoshi's Late Masterpiece

Tsuki Hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon), published by Akiyama Buemon between 1885 and 1892, is universally regarded as the crowning achievement of Yoshitoshi's career and one of the last great monuments of the ukiyo-e tradition. Across one hundred designs drawn from history, legend, literature, and — as here — the living festival culture of Edo, the moon serves as the unifying thread. This sheet, published in June 1886 during the strong early run of the series, preserves the full publication block in the margin: the red date cartouche and the Akiyama Buemon address.

Yoshitoshi trained under Utagawa Kuniyoshi and is widely regarded as the last great master of ukiyo-e. Impressions of this design are held by the Library of Congress, the National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and other major collections.