Bake-Bake Gakk- (-), or "School for Spooks", by Ky-sai. In August 1872, the Meiji government decided to implement a system of compulsory education. In this caricature, both demons (above) and kappa (center) are learning vocabulary concerning their daily life. The former are taught by Sh“ki the demon queller, dressed in western-style uniform. Some goblins try to enter the school (below), but are blown away by the Wind God.
Kawanabe Ky-sai[1] (- 1831-1889) was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".[2]
Living through the Edo period to the Meiji period, Ky-sai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at Koga, he was the son of a samurai. After working for a short time as a boy with Utagawa Kuniyoshi, he received his artistic training in the Kan- school, but soon abandoned the formal traditions for the greater freedom of the popular school. During the political ferment which produced and followed the revolution of 1867, Ky-sai attained a reputation as a caricaturist. He was arrested three times and imprisoned by the authorities of the shogunate. Soon after the assumption of effective power by the Emperor, a great congress of painters and men of letters was held at which Ky-sai was present. He again expressed his opinion of the new movement in a caricature, which had a great popular success, but also brought him into the hands of the police this time of the opposite party.
Ky-sai must be considered the greatest successor of Hokusai (of whom, however, he was not a pupil), and as the first political caricaturist of Japan. His work like his life is somewhat wild and undisciplined, and occasionally smacks of the sake cup. But if he did not possess Hokusai's dignity, power and reticence, he substituted an exuberant fancy, which always lends interest to draughtsmanship of very great technical excellence.
Renjishi (), or "Dance of a Pair of Lions", by Ky-sai. Renjishi is a famous dance in the Kabuki theatre.
In addition to his caricatures, Ky-sai painted a large number of pictures and sketches, often choosing subjects from the folklore of his country. A fine collection of these works is preserved in the British Museum; and there are also good examples in the National Art Library at South Kensington and the Guimet Museum at Paris. The Kawanabe Ky-sai Memorial Museum was established in 1977, located at Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, Japan.
Bibliography
The most important work about Ky-sai's art and life was written by himself: Ky-sai Gadan (-), or "Ky-sai's Treatise on Painting", half autobiography and half painting manual. An important contemporary work concerning the artist is Kawanabe Ky„sai-“ den (), or "Biography of the Old Man Kawanabe Ky-sai", by Iijima Kyoshin (-). The work was finished in 1899, but published only in 1984.
Many westerners came to visit Ky-sai, and their memoirs about the artist are valuable. The two important ones, both rare, are:
- Émile Étienne Guimet, Promenades japonaises, Paris, 1880
- Josiah Conder, Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Ky-sai, Tokyo, 1911. Conder was a serious student of Japanese art; after some initial rejections, he was accepted as Ky-sai's pupil, and accompanied him until the master's death.
The most updated, and easily available, reference to Ky-sai's life and works in English is:
- Timothy Clark, Demon of painting: the art of Kawanabe Ky-sai, London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by the British Museum Press, 1993
Notes
- ^ He changed the first character of his name from - (wild, crazy) to - (dawn, enlightenment), after one of his several releases from prison. - has two On-readings, "ky-" and "gy-", the latter being more well-known (many dictionaries provide only this reading), so the artist's name is also falsely romanised as Kawanabe Gy-sai.
- ^ Clark, p.16
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