Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Depiction of Beautiful Women

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Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s Depiction of Beautiful Women Nakazawa Mai This essay considers the stylistic characteristics of the bijinga pictures of beauties by the late Edo period ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861). This examination consisted of a comparison with the leading ukiyo-e bijinga artist of the day, his older studio mate Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1864), and an examination of how Kuniyoshi’s style was developed by his pupil Tsukio- ka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) who was active in the Meiji period. First, in the section titled 2. Changes in Kuniyoshi’s Bijinga Depiction, I focused on two factors, facial and body depiction, tracking the changes in characteristics and pictorial style across the works in each era, namely the Tenpô, Kôka and Kaei eras. As a result, the uniform depiction found in the Tenpô period was striking, while the Kôka era works show a sense of each woman’s indi- viduality and emotions, and by the Kaei era, there was a sense of a deepening of these features and as such, a broadening of how the beauties were depicted. This study also indicated that many of the women were quite well fleshed, bright in expression and depicted with a sense of vivacity. Continuing, 3. Comparison with Kunisada’s Works, shows that the Tenpô era Kuniyoshi was influenced by the beauty style of Kunisada, which was already popular at the time, and from the Kôka era onwards he established his own distinctive beauty style. Further, considering that Kuniyoshi then became renowned for his warrior prints while Kunisada for his actor prints, then we can indicate the possibility that their respective Kôka era and later bijinga were based on their respective specialty genres. In other words, Kunisada pursued ideal forms of beauty in his bijinga while Kuniyoshi depicted realistic, natural beauties. Finally, in 4. Beauty Expression Carried into the Meiji Period, I considered how Yoshitoshi developed Kuniyoshi’s beauty depiction. The realistic beauty pictures created by Kuniyoshi were transformed by Yoshi- toshi who sought to create beauty pictures that were all the more realistic. Yoshitoshi used Kuniyoshi’s beauties as his basis and rather than creating images like his teacher of bright, vivacious women, sought to make them all them more graphic and livelier. Through the above observations and comparison of artists, I concluded that Kuniyoshi was an artist who developed a modern style of bijinga through his creation of ukiyo-e works depicting a fresh sense of women’s expres- sions and actions. 82.

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