Edutainment > Woodblock Prints by Kunisada Utagawa - 1786-1865

Kunisada Prints I

Japanese Prints - Home
Tosei Gonin Zoroi - Five famous kabuki actors playing musical instruments.
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Kunisada Utagawa was one of the prolific masters of ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century. His output is estimated at roughly 20,000 designs of woodblock prints showing kabuki actors, beautiful women, sumo wrestlers, erotic pictures and more. How was this possible? This article tries to shed some light on Kunisada's prints.

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Kunisada - the Businessman

Kunisada Prints II

Kunisada Biography
Seven Changes - Kabuki, ca. 1830s
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In contrast to Utagawa Kuniyoshi, his rival, Kunisada Utagawa was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had inherited a ferry boat license from his father. And as an designer of ukiyo-e he was successful from a very early age on.

Kunisada was not only a good printmaker, but he also had a good sense for the commercial aspects of producing woodblock prints. This becomes obvious when you look at the print subjects on which he focused. Kunisada's main oeuvre were actor portraits and kabuki scenes. Other subjects of his print production were bijin (beautiful women), sumo wrestling, shunga (under a name alias), and the Genji Monogatari (The Tales of Prince Genji) subject.

But you will find very few landscape prints and few prints showing warriors (yakusha-e). Why? This restriction had a simple reason. The two subjects (landscapes and warriors) were already firmly in the hands of two other great printmakers, Ando Hiroshige for landscapes and Kuniyoshi Utagawa who was nicknamed the "warrior Kuniyoshi".

20,000 Woodblock Prints by Kunisada?

Utagawa Kunisada was a very prolific ukiyo-e designer. His total oeuvre is estimated at roughly 20,000 designs. How come? Kunisada died at the age of 81. Even if we assume a span of 60 years of activity in printmaking, the great master had to make on an average one woodblock print per day without ever granting himself a day off. Hard to imagine! What is the explanation?

The Great Misunderstanding of Ukiyo-e

Kunisada Prints III

Sumo Wrestlers
Sumo Wrestler, 1854
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When a stream of ukiyo-e (Japanese prints) began to pour into Europe from Japan towards the end of the nineteenth century, it caused a craze for everything Japanese. The French called it Japonism. Ukiyo-e influenced French impressionists like Claude Monet and post-impressionists like Toulouse-Lautrec.

Then European scholars began to study the Japanese prints and began to write academic books about ukiyo-e. But they made one huge mistake. They regarded ukiyo-e as fine art, and described and evaluated these prints by the standards of what Europeans considered as fine art at the time. This attitude lasted until circa 1980/90.

The Japanese people always had an inner laugh at how Europeans saw ukiyo-e. Nobody in Japan has ever regarded ukiyo-e as fine art, but as a mass media - comparable to today's production of posters. And this is what it was. A mass media for the common people and a business for those who were involved in the creation of Japanese woodblock prints.

The Involvement of the Artist

But back to Kunisada and the question how all these roughly 20,000 designs may have been created. Well, assume that the larger part, and especially the later works, have not been accomplished by Kunisada alone and himself. Kunisada had a studio of diligent students, and from 1844/45 on he was in charge of the Utagawa School with access to a large number of apprentices. I assume that many of the Kunisada prints were created in detail by his best students with rough sketches and a loose supervision by the great master.

But let us not draw any false conclusions. Most of the best-known masters of European painting worked precisely in the same way. They maintained large workshops once they had become famous and when their art works were in high demand. There is a long lineage of "workshop artists" from Rubens to contemporary artist Damien Hirst.

It was the great merit of the pop art movement with artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, to question the boundaries between "fine art" and "commercial art".

The Appreciation of Kunisada

Kunisada Prints IV

Genji Monogatari
The Tale of Genji - Suetsumuhana, 1857
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The appreciation of artists in art history all over the world has always been subject to trends and fashions. Japanese prints do not make an exception.

Kunisada was considered to be the greatest printmaker at his lifetime. At least he was more lucky than van Gogh, Henri Rousseau or Paul Gauguin who first had to die before the world took even notice of them.

Later during the 20th century, Kunisada was regarded by all these self-styled "art scholars" and "art experts" who write these boring books in which they classify artists and art movements as "decadent" or as "golden age", as inferior to Kuniyoshi.

More recently the pendulum seems to swing back in favor of Kunisada.

I think such discussions are a waste of time. Art is subject to personal tastes and its appreciation has always been subject to the society and culture in which you grew up and live in. And since art and craftsmanship have ceased towards the late 19th century to be regarded as being an inseparable entity, everything is now in flux anyway.

Collecting Kunisada Prints

Kunisada Prints V

Kabuki Theater
Snow Viewing on the Bridge, 1854 (Kabuki)
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For collectors it is nevertheless of interest how an artist is evaluated. If he is considered "inferior" or "minor" or "decadent" in literature and in public discussions, you can get his works cheap and vice versa. And experience shows that the art buying people tend to exaggerate to both sides. And art auctions are the sales outlets where these exaggerations are more extreme than anywhere else (herd mentality).

Smart collectors of Japanese prints find a good field in Kunisada prints. They are easily available and they are usually inexpensive. When you look at ukiyo-e online auctions, you will usually find plenty of prints by Kunisada, plenty of cheap prints by Hiroshige (not the expensive ones) but fewer by Kuniyoshi. As a general rule, don't buy because it is trendy. Buy if you like it and if it is within the limits of your art budget.

And last but not least, remember an old Japanese saying:

"If you believe everything you read, better not read."

Dieter Wanczura
(September 2009)

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