Yoshitoshi - The Middle Years: Hard Times and Resurrection

The Middle Years: Hard Times and Resurrection

By 1869, Yoshitoshi was regarded as one of the best woodblock artists in Japan. However, shortly thereafter, he ceased to receive commissions, perhaps because the public were tired of scenes of violence. By 1871, Yoshitoshi became severely depressed, and his personal life became one of great turmoil, which was to continue sporadically until his death. He lived in appalling conditions with his devoted mistress, Okoto, who sold off her clothes and possessions to support him. At one point they were reduced to burning the floor-boards from the house for warmth. It is said that in 1872 he suffered a complete mental breakdown after being shocked by the lack of popularity of his recent designs.

In the following year his fortunes turned, when his mood improved, and he started to produce more prints. Prior to 1873, he had signed most of his prints as "Ikkaisai Yoshitoshi". However, as a form of self-affirmation, he at this time changed his artist name to "Taiso" (meaning "great resurrection"). Newspapers sprung up in the modernization drive, and Yoshitoshi was recruited to produce "news nishikie". These were woodblock prints designed as full-page illustrations to accompany articles, usually on lurid and sensationalized subjects such as "true crime" stories. Yoshitoshi's financial condition was still precarious, however, and in 1876, his mistress Okoto, in a gesture of devotion, sold herself to a brothel to help him.

With the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, in which the old feudal order made one last attempt to stop the new Japan, newspaper circulation soared, and woodblock artists were in demand, with Yoshitoshi earning much attention. In late 1877, he took up with a new mistress, the geisha Oraku; like Okoto, she sold her clothes and possessions to support him, and when they separated after a year, she too hired herself out to a brothel. Yoshitoshi's works gave him more public recognition, and the money was a help, but it was not until 1882 that he was secure.

A series of bijin-ga designed in 1878 entitled Bita shichi yosei caused political trouble for Yoshitoshi because it depicted seven female attendants to the Imperial court and identified them by name, it may be that the Empress Meiji herself was displeased with this fact and with the style of her portrait in the series.

In 1880, he met another woman, a former geisha with two children, Sakamaki Taiko. They were married in 1884, and while he continued to philander, her gentle and patient temperament seems to have helped stabilize his behaviors. One of Taiko's children, adopted as a son, became Yoshitoshi's student, and was thence known as Tsukioka Kōgyo.

Yoshitoshi's notorious, yet compelling, “Oshu adachigahara hitotsuya no zu” (The Lonely House on Adachi Moor) appeared in 1885. This macabre work is iconic in its own right, and influential in the history of modern kinbaku, in that Itoh Seiu was fascinated by Yoshitoshi's accurate depiction of sakasa zuri (upside down suspension).

An 1885 issue of the art and fashion magazine "Tokyo Hayari Hosomiki" ranked Yoshitoshi as the number-one ukiyo-e artist, ahead of his Meiji contemporaries such as Utagawa Yoshiiku and Toyohara Kunichika. Thus he had achieved great popularity and critical acclaim.

By this point, the woodblock industry was in severe straits. All the great woodblock artists of the early part of the century, Hiroshige, Kunisada, and Kuniyoshi, had died decades earlier, and the woodblock print as an art form was dying in the confusion of modernizing Japan.

Yoshitoshi insisted on high standards of production, and helped save it temporarily from degeneracy. He became a master teacher and had notable pupils such as Toshikata Mizuno, Toshihide Migita, and others.