Yamakawa Riku | Special Exhibition "Yoshitoshi: The Eccentric Ukiyo-e Artist Who Lived Through a Turbulent Era" (Part 2)
Part 2 of the Mizuno Museum's Yoshitoshi exhibition examines his drawings to reveal his realistic observation and imagination.Summary
This article is the second part of a series on the special exhibition "Yoshitoshi: The Eccentric Ukiyo-e Artist Who Lived Through a Turbulent Era" held at the Mizuno Museum in Nagano from August 1 to September 27, 2026. The author focuses on Yoshitoshi after his recovery from neurasthenia, when he renamed himself Taiso Yoshitoshi. The exhibition displays two preliminary drawings for the 1885 series "Shinsen Azuma Nishiki-e," executed in pencil and watercolor. Their depiction of models in posed positions reveals that Yoshitoshi made realistic sketches of muscular movement and facial expressions. Yoshitoshi is said to have repeatedly sketched on battlefields, and was an artist who carefully observed reality. While he depicted the Satsuma Rebellion entirely from imagination without visiting the front, in the work "Mariko" highlighted in this exhibition, soldiers and townspeople are depicted as members of a group, lacking dramatic staging. This absence suggests both the gap between Yoshitoshi's observed reality and a new era's arrival, and emphasizes the "departing figures" who appear in his other series. The exhibition reveals Yoshitoshi's hesitation about how to observe and depict his era—what he painted and what he did not—evoking both the richness and difficulty of tracing an artist's life. The author expresses hope for further research into what Yoshitoshi saw and heard during his lifetime.
(Source：artscape)