Yoshitoshi's 100 Aspects of the Moon: A Haibun Collection

Introduction

Yoshitoshi's 100 Aspects of the Moon
A Haibun Collection
Fox-Trot-9

Introduction

1: The Artist

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-June 9, 1892) (also named Taiso Yoshitoshi) was a Japanese artist. He is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing. He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras—the last years of feudal Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.

By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

His life is perhaps best summed up by John Stevenson:

Yoshitoshi's courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory.

—John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1992

His reputation has only continued to grow, both in the West, and among younger Japanese, and he is now almost universally recognized as the greatest Japanese artist of his era.

—from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia

2: The Work

Yoshitoshi's series, One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, begun in 1885 and completed shortly before his death in 1892, epitomizes the restraint and subtlety that define his later work. Against a backdrop of a national policy of westernization during the rule of the Meiji Emperor (1868-1912), Yoshitoshi offered his audience a pilgrimage to Japan's glorious past. Published between 1885 and 1892, this series of 100 individual woodblock prints depicts figures from Japanese and Chinese legend, history, literature, folklore and theater.  Each subject is captured at a moment in time and held suspended by a poetic dialogue with the moon.

The phases of the moon formed the basis of the calendar system in pre-industrialized Japan. In the lunar calendar, the night of the new moon is the first day of each month and the full moon follows two weeks later. Those familiar with this system can easily correlate the date of a specific event with the state of the moon on that night.  Yoshitoshi used the waxing and waning phases of the moon and the symbolism associated with them as a commentary on the human condition. The artist's own experiences with poverty and mental illness instilled in him a sense of compassion and a desire to explore the depth and range of human emotion. While the sense of tranquility that Yoshitoshi seemed to reach in his last years is evident in One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, there are also an underlying darkness and loneliness that haunt the viewer. In a country that was no longer the old Japan, and not yet the new Japan, this series had great appeal to an audience on the brink of the unknown.

—from the Museum of International Folk Art (website)

3: A Poet's Admiration of His Work

Now it's time for my part in this appreciation. I'm not going to ramble on about how great Yoshitoshi's works are; you'll just have to see that for yourself. But my aim here is to illustrate the thoughts and emotions his pictures convey by using the traditional form of the haibun, which is a short prose passage with a haiku at the end. The use of poetry with pictures in not unheard of in the Japanese tradition; many haiku collections from the time of the Shogunate to the Meiji Era show pictures or symbols of what the haiku are trying to say. Now I'm not sure if a collection like this was composed before, but it's my initiative to breathe new life into an old art form and see how far I can take it.

—Fox-Trot-9

(To be continued...)

A/N: The online exhibition of Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon was developed for the Museum of International Folk Art by Bernice Chavez and Ardena Tenorio, students from Santa Fe Indian School. This is my newest poetry collection, offering you a look into the glorious past of Japan. I hope you enjoy it! ( ^_^ )