Kobayashi Kiyochika Prints

About Kobayashi Kiyochika

Kobayashi Kiyochika was born Kobayashi Katsunosuke in September 1847 in the Honjo district of Edo, now Tokyo, the son of a minor official who unloaded tax rice for the shogunate. Though the youngest of nine children, he became head of the family when his father died in 1862. He served the shogun and fought on the shogun's side in the Boshin War of 1868, then lived for several years in Shizuoka. He returned to Tokyo in 1873 and turned to art, perhaps studying with Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai. In 1876 he published his first kōsen-ga, or light-ray pictures: woodblock prints of the modernising city that used Western light and shade. His specialty was night scenes lit from within the picture, by lamps, fires or a lit window, in a soft palette without the harsh new aniline dyes. His own house burned in the Ryōgoku fire of 1881, and his prints of that and another fire sold well. In the 1880s he drew comic pictures for newspapers, and during the war with China in 1894 and 1895 he produced many war prints. In later years he turned to painting in the Shijō manner. He died at his home in Tokyo in November 1915. Many collectors see his prints as the last important body of ukiyo-e.