Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
Japanese, 1839-1892

Reflected Moonlight, 1886
from the series: One Hundred Views of the Moon
Published by Akiyama Buemon
With Taiso seal (Great Resurrection) of artist
Nishiki-e (color woodblock print)
Oban format

Museum Collection

Yoshitoshi, the pupil of Kuniyoshi, is considered the last of the great Ukiyo-e artists, reaching artistic maturity during the Meiji period, after 1868, when Japan began to Westernize. Swinging between strenuous exaltation and bloody despair, Yoshitoshi, in his art and life, absorbed the perhaps impossible contradictions of a Japan that was evolving centuries in a few decades. A master of tradition and an anguished believer in Japan's ancient glory, Yoshitoshi fused Western realism and craftsmanship with Japanese feeling. But beauty drips with blood in his work, while even his aching tenderness is oddly earthy-and must strive for its Buddhist consolation.

In this print, part of a justly famous series which ranges widely in Japanese history and legend, a lady of the medieval Heian court plays her lute and prepares to drown herself because of unrequited love. A poet, Lady Ariko later became a character in Noh plays with a Buddhist theme. Love - being earthly passion - is always unrequited, and we are reminded of its transient nature by the purity of the mutable moon. A woman, of course, proves both her courage and her essential purity by losing everything - at least in the realm of Kabuki and Noh theater. Lady Ariko's poem is recorded on the print: How hopeless it is/it would be better for me to sink beneath the waves/perhaps there I could see my man from Moon Capital. Is the necessity of yearning the only reality in the relationship between men and women?




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