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This dramatic 1851 Japanese woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi depicts kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII as Narukami Shōnin.

In the famous kabuki story, Narukami imprisons a dragon god, causing a terrible drought. When a beautiful woman tricks him into releasing the dragon, the rains return – and Narukami is furious.

Kuniyoshi captures that moment with wild hair, a spectacular flame-patterned kimono, and an enormous billowing costume. It's a wonderful example of his ability to bring the drama of kabuki theater to life through woodblock printing.

I recently featured Natori Shunsen's portrait of this same character. It's fascinating to see how two great Japanese artists interpreted Narukami so differently.

#Kuniyoshi #JapaneseWoodblockPrints #Ukiyoe #Kabuki #JapaneseArt #Narukami #EdoPeriod

Why was this seemingly innocent Japanese woodblock print considered too suggestive in 1930?

Torii Kotondo’s Morning Hair (Asanegami) depicts a young woman just after waking, her hair loose as she rests against a pillow beneath a green mosquito net.

When the original edition was published, Japanese authorities objected to the intimate scene. Only a small number of impressions had been sold before the remaining prints were reportedly confiscated and destroyed.

The problem wasn’t nudity, but what the image implied – her disheveled hair, the pillow, and the intimate morning setting suggested that she had spent the night with someone.

Today, Morning Hair is one of Kotondo’s best-known and most sought-after designs.

#ToriiKotondo #MorningHair #ShinHanga #JapaneseWoodblockPrints #Bijinga #JapaneseArt #Ukiyoe

Does anyone know any information on this piece??? Please!

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was one of the great woodblock print artists of the Meiji period, but he also worked as an illustrator for Japan’s rapidly growing newspaper industry.

In this print, Yoshitoshi depicts Miyamoto Hanako in a dramatic scene drawn from a contemporary news story. These newspaper prints – or nishiki-e shinbun – combined sensational stories of crime, accidents, scandals, and unusual events with colorful woodblock illustrations designed to attract the attention of readers.

It’s an example of how traditional ukiyo-e adapted to a rapidly modernizing Japan – and how an artist like Yoshitoshi could turn a piece of contemporary news into a memorable work of art.

#Yoshitoshi #TsukiokaYoshitoshi #JapaneseWoodblockPrints #UkiyoE #MeijiPeriod #JapaneseArt #ArtHistory

Was going for a Song Dahae kinda mix with the ukiyo-e bird art of my typical works.

Hello. I’ve recently acquired 8 of these women. Well actually, one is a fella with a falcon. 6 are Keisei Eisen and 2 are Kunisada Utagawa, afaik. Many of them I have been able to identify, but these 3 I most definitely have not. I’ve tried the Ukiyo-e dot org image search and a Facebook group. These are actually the only ones with publisher marks, so it seems weird they’ve been the hardest to find.

The first one is the most tattered of all of them and she is also the best of all of them. I love her.

Anyway, if anyone has any idea what I’m looking at or ideas for places to keep looking, I would appreciate it. Thank you for looking.

Edit: I didn’t include dimensions! The are roughly 28.5”x10” or 73cm x 25cm.

Last year, on Facebook Marketplace, I bought this charming collection of eight prints, featuring children at play. I asked the vendor what she knew about them (as I love to learn the “life story” of the lovely and/or quirky bits and pieces that become part of our family). She told me that they had belonged to her mother, who received the pictures from a Japanese pen pal during their childhood. The vendor’s mother must have liked them, as she persuaded her parents to have them professionally framed at an establishment called “The Picture Palace”! (Sadly, it no longer exists.)  I have done a little sporadic googling but haven’t been able to find any semblance of these particular the images online. All I have deduced is that they appear to be Japanese woodblock prints, mostly likely dating back to the mid-1950s or 60s, based on a guesstimate of the vendor’s age – and her mother’s. The framed prints are all the same size: 24 x 24 cm. Can anyone shed some light on their history? Cheers, Jude. PS I wonder what type of gifts the vendor’s mother, who grew up in Tasmania, would have sent to Japan to try to impress her pen pal?

A Buddhist priest who imprisons a dragon god and stops the rain – this is Priest Narukami, one of kabuki’s great dramatic characters.

This striking 1926 woodblock print by Natori Shunsen depicts actor Ichikawa Sadanji II as Narukami. After Narukami uses his supernatural powers to imprison the dragon god, the country falls into drought. The Imperial Court responds by sending a beautiful woman to seduce him and secretly free the dragon.

Shunsen presents the actor in an ōkubi-e, or large-head portrait, concentrating on his intense expression rather than the action of the play.

Published by Watanabe Shōzaburō, the print is a wonderful example of Shunsen’s ability to bring the centuries-old tradition of kabuki actor prints into the Shin-hanga era.

#NatoriShunsen #Narukami #Kabuki #ShinHanga #JapaneseWoodblockPrints #Ukiyoe #JapaneseArt