Utagawa Kuniyoshi
Artwork: The Cat Demon of Okazaki, c. 1850
Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861) was ukiyo-e's great storyteller of the spectacular: warrior triptychs, the heroes of the Suikoden, landscapes, and ghosts, drawn with a force that made him the master of the generation that followed him, including the young Yoshitoshi, who trained in his studio.
He was also the art's great cat artist. He kept cats in his studio and filled sketchbooks with them, and the two works below are where his obsessions meet: the bakeneko of Okazaki materializing out of the lamplight in a diptych of about 1850, an enormous cat's face inside a ring of light while the figures before it have not yet turned around; and the drowned Taira clan returning as ghosts against a ship in Daimotsu Bay in a triptych of 1849 to 1852, where the storm itself is given the starring role.
