Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
Artwork: Ibaraki, the Demon of Rashōmon, 1880
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) is remembered as the last great master of ukiyo-e. He was trained in Kuniyoshi's studio and began publishing prints as a teenager, then worked through the collapse of the world that had made woodblock prints possible, as Edo became Tokyo and photography and lithography took over the image trade. His late work is counted the final flowering of the art.
Ghosts and demons were a lifelong subject. The two works below, both designed in 1880, draw the same demon twice: Ibaraki in furious flight from the Rashōmon gate, white hair streaming and one clawed hand trailing smoke, and Ibaraki again in disguise as an elderly aunt, bent over the box that holds his severed arm at the moment of the theft. Between them they show Yoshitoshi's signature gifts: speed, violence, and a story caught at its most dangerous second.
