Blood Wars

Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, perhaps the best-known of all 19th century ukiyo-e artists, created illustrations of mythic warriors and legendary battles throughout his career, including years spent documenting contemporaneous civil conflicts. This book collects 100 such prints by Yoshitoshi, often violent and bloody in nature, ranging in subject from the internecine decapitation wars of the 12th to 16th centuries to the uprising of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, the last stand of Japan's samurai class against the new imperial government. The selection of works is also limited to the triptych format, which gave ukiyo-e artists the freedom to express their phantasies as narratives in a kinetic, detailed image frame. All illustrations are reproduced in full color.