(When Kunisada died in 1865, Kunichika was commissioned to...)
When Kunisada died in 1865, Kunichika was commissioned to design two memorial portraits. The right panel of the portrait contains an obituary written by the writer, Kanagaki Robun, while the left contains memorial poems written by the three top students, including Kunichika.
Kunichika Utagawa was a Japanese woodblock print artist.
Background
Kunichika Utagawa was born on June 30, 1835 in Tokyo, Japan. His father, Oshima Kyuju, was the proprietor of a sento (public bathhouse), the Ōshūya. An indifferent family man, and poor businessman, he lost the bathhouse sometime in Yasohachi's childhood. The boy's mother, Arakawa Oyae, was the daughter of a teahouse proprietor. At that time, commoners of a certain social standing could ask permission to alter the family name (myoji gomen). To distance themselves from the father's failure, the family took the mother's surname, and the boy became Arakawa Yasohachi.
Education
Little is known about his childhood except that, as a youth, Yasohachi earned a reputation as a prankster and drew complaints from his neighbors, and that at nine he was involved in a fight at the Sanno Festival in Asakusa. At age ten he was apprenticed to a thread and yarn store. However, because he preferred painting and sketching to learning the dry goods trade, at eleven he moved to a shop near his father's bathhouse. There he helped in the design of Japanese lampshades called andon, consisting of a wooden frame with a paper cover. When he was twelve, his older brother, Chokichi, opened a raised picture shop, and Yasohachi drew illustrations for him.
It is believed that around age twelve Yasohachi began to study with Toyohara (Ichiosai) Chikanobu (not to be confused with Kunichika’s student Toyohara Chikanobu). At the same time he designed actor portraits for battledores sold by a shop called Meirindo.
His teacher gave him the name "Kazunobu". It may have been on the recommendation of Chikanobu that the boy was accepted the following year as an apprentice in the studio of Utagawa Kunisada, the leading and most prolific print maker of the mid-19th century.
By 1854 the young artist had made his first confirmed signed print and had taken the name "Kunichika", a composite of the names of this two teachers, Kunisada and Chikanobu. His early work was derivative of the Utagawa style and some of his prints were outright copies (an accepted practice of the time). While working in Kunisada's studio Kunichika was assigned a commission to make a print illustrating a bird's-eye view of Tenjinbashi Avenue following the terrible earthquake of 1855 that destroyed most of the city. This assignment suggests that he was considered one of Kunisada's better students.
Career
At the time Kunichika began his serious studies the late Edo period, an extension of traditions based on a feudal society, was about to end. The "modern" Meiji era, a time of rapid modernization, industrialization, and extensive contact with the West, was in stark contrast to what had come before.
Ukiyo-e artists had traditionally illustrated urban life and society - especially the theater, for which their prints often served as advertising. The Meiji period brought competition from the new technologies of photography and photoengraving, effectively destroying the careers of most.
As Kunichika matured his reputation as a master of design and of drama grew steadily. In guides rating ukiyo-e artists his name appeared in the top ten in 1865, 1867, and 1885, when he was in eighth, fifth, and fourth place, respectively. In 1867, one year before the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he received an official commission by the government to contribute ten pictures to the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris. He also had a print at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
In 1869 he did a series jointly with Yoshitoshi, a more "modern" artist in the sense that he depicted faces realistically. In addition, Kunichika experimented with "Western" vanishing point perspective. Unlike most artists of the period, he made use of strong reds and dark purples, often as background colors, rather than the softer colors that had previously been used. (For the Japanese the color red meant progress and enlightenment in the new era of Western-style progress.)
In 1863 Kunichika was one of a number of artists who contributed landscape prints to two series of famous Tokaido scenes commissioned to commemorate the journey made by the shogun Iemochi from Edo to Kyoto to pay his respects to the emperor.
Around 1897, his older brother opened the Arakawa Photo shop, and Kunichika worked in the store. Because Kunichika had a dislike for both the store and photography, only one photograph of him exists. In October 1898 Kunichika was interviewed for a series of four articles about him, The Meiji-period child of Edo, which appeared in the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.
Kunichika died at his home in Honjo (an eastern suburb of Tokyo) on July 1, 1900 at the age of 65, due to a combination of poor health and bouts of heavy drinking brought on by the death at 39 of his daughter Hana while giving birth to his grandson, Yoshido Ito, some months previously. He was buried at the Shingon Buddhist sect temple of Honryuji in Imado, Asakusa. His grave marker is thought to have been destroyed in a 1923 earthquake, but family members erected a new one in 1974.
As a young man, Kunichika had a reputation for a beautiful singing voice and as a fine dancer. He is known to have used these talents in amateur burlesque shows.
Kunichika was described as having an open, friendly and sincere personality. He enjoyed partying with the geishas and prostitutes of the Yoshiwara district, while consuming abundant amounts of alcohol. His greatest passion, however, was said to be the theater, where he was a backstage regular. His appearance said to be shabby. He was constantly in debt and often borrowed money from the kabuki actors he depicted so admiringly.
Quotes from others about the person
A contemporary said of him: "Print designing, theater and drinking were his life and for him that was enough."
Connections
In 1861 Kunichika married his first wife, Ohana, and in that same year had a daughter, Hana. The marriage is thought not to have lasted long, as he was a womanizer. He fathered two out-of-wedlock children, a girl and a boy, with whom he had no contact.
