Artist: Utagawa Kunisada III (1848–1920), signing as Kōchōrō (香朝楼) Title: 景陽山岡虎退治　水滸傳 — Suikoden: Subduing the Tiger on Jingyang Ridge Subject: The Water Margin hero Bushō / Wu Song (武松), played by Ichikawa Sadanji I, wrestling the man-eating tiger of Jingyang Ridge bare-handed beneath a waterfall. A second role cartouche names "the hunter" (猟人), an actor of the Nakamura line, whose torch-bearing arm enters from the right Signature: 應需香朝楼筆 Ōju Kōchōrō hitsu ("Kōchōrō"), with red artist's seal Date: Meiji era; dated Meiji 20s (c. 1890s) Format: Two ōban sheets, tate-e — left and centre panels of an original triptych; each approx. 37 × 25 cm, Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Condition: Strong aniline reds and blues, extensive metallic and blind-embossed detail in the robe roundels, and fine hairline carving in the tiger's whiskers and mane. Some minor creases. The paper is with generous margins, firm and subtle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- About the print The tiger of Jingyang Ridge is one of the great set pieces of the Suikoden, and one of the reasons the Chinese novel took such deep root in Japan. Wu Song — Bushō in Japanese — drinks eighteen bowls of wine at an inn at the foot of the ridge, ignores the warning notice, walks up the mountain path alone, and kills the man-eater with his bare hands. Kuniyoshi made the episode famous in Japanese print form in the 1820s; sixty years later it was still box-office, and this design comes from a Meiji stage production in which the role was taken by Ichikawa Sadanji I (1842–1904) — one of the three actors, with Danjūrō IX and Kikugorō V, who made up the celebrated Dan-Kiku-Sa triumvirate of the Meiji theatre. Kōchōrō gives it everything the late-Meiji press could do. Bushō wears a magnificent scarlet robe scattered with silver-and-gold flower roundels over a purple mantle and blue underlayer; his right fist is cocked above his head, his teeth are set, and the tiger is already twisting under him, jaws open, one striped forepaw clawing at the air. Behind them a blue-white cataract pours down through bamboo and dark green rock; on the right sheet the sky turns to deep indigo night, and a burning torch flares against it. The tiger itself is beautifully cut — the whiskers and the fur along the belly are printed in hairline detail, and the black stripe pattern is worked in bold curling scrolls rather than naturalistic bands, which is exactly the decorative instinct that makes Meiji musha-e so effective at this scale.