Kuniyoshi's Heroic Women

Seichu gi-shin den

Women in the Tokugawa Period

To say that the Tokugawa Period, with its marriage laws and social practices, was not kind to women is something of an understatement. With the exception of entertainers - teahouse girls, courtesans and geisha - and historical characters - the women of literature and legend - very few adult females star as the central figures of woodblock prints (outside of shunga).

But while women of pleasure predominate in ukiyo-e, the other notable category, historical women, was an arena in which the female could be depicted as something other than an object of male desire.

Women Warriors and Other Heroic Women

The woman warrior Tomoe Gozen, the Genji author Murasaki Shikibu, and Tokiwa Gozen, mother of Yoritomo and Yoshitsune, all figure as powerful women in Japanese prints from the eighteenth century on. But no artist made the heroic woman so much a part of his oeuvre or paid her so much respectful attention as Kuniyoshi.

In his prints of the 1840s and 50s, he over and again selected strong women as the subjects of his prints, even taking the unprecedented step of devoting several series to the theme. For those interested in gathering images of women in Japanese culture, there is no better place to start to get a full and rounded picture than with these works by Kuniyoshi.

Kuniyoshi's interest in the heroic woman seems to have begun early in his career, with his pre-1820 portraits of the "iron woman" Kane-jo, stopping a runaway horse by stepping on its reins and Princess Kamigashi slaying a giant spider (Robinson S1a). But it was not until the 1840s that Kuniyoshi began to devote whole series to the theme, the earliest being Kenjo reppuden, "Stories of Wise Women and Faithful Wives".

Confucian Morality

Mirror of Wise

and Courageous Women

The ostensive sources for such prints, as this title suggests, were books of Confucian morality, many of which were aimed specifically at women, that were published throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But Kuniyoshi's series, though it picks up on some of the themes presented in these books and uses them for cover, presents a very different view of women.

The self-sacrificing woman praised in the Confucian texts of female education is liberally represented, with figures such as Masaoka, who gave her own child's life to save her lord's, and Kesa Gozen, who allowed herself to be killed in her husband's place to protect her family and virtue.

But Kuniyoshi also chose to depict in this series women of strong mind and body who resisted the men in their lives. These include Hotoke Gozen, the shirabyoshi dancer who left Kiyomori to become a nun, and the poet Izumi Shikibu, a strong-minded and individualistic heroine.

Similar female figures are found in Kuniyoshi's other half-dozen series on women which include as subjects many women renown for their own strength, intelligence and ability, rather than simply the sacrifices they make for others.

Female Nobility

Uso to Makoto Kokoto

no Ura-omote

In presentation too, Kuniyoshi's historical women differ from those depicted in typical ukiyo-e. Specifically, sexuality is not the main interest in these female figures; though without exception attractive, even beautiful in appearance, Kuniyoshi's women retain strength, nobility and character as their primary traits.

This is true to some extent even in Kuniyoshi's bijin work that is not historical, where his typical beauty portrait presents a tougher, more lively and spirited type than is typical in other bijin work of the time. Kuniyoshi, the leading artist of the warrior and strong man print in ukiyo-e, would seem to have been drawn to strong, individualized women as well. His work of the 1840s and 50s presents a group of ideal women unlike any other in the history of ukiyo-e, particularly remarkable for its ability to rise above the standard images of women at the time, and establish an appealing and inspiring canon of female heroes.

Dan McKee

The author, Dan McKee is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Japanese literature program at Cornell University, NY.  He has a Master of the Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, as well as an M.A. from Cornell.

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