郵便報知新聞 645号|Postal Hōchi Newspaper no. 645, Englishman raping a wine shopkeeper's daughter (Yūbin Hōchi shinbun, roppyaku yonjū gogō)
August, 1875
Medium
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
Image: 14 1/8 x 9 3/8 in. (35.9 x 23.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Culture & Period
Japan · Meiji period (1868–1912)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005
Accession Number
2007.49.311
Tags
Art Historical Context
This striking woodblock print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi captures a sensational news event reported in the Yūbin Hōchi shinbun (Postal Hōchi Newspaper) in August 1875. Created during Japan’s Meiji period, when the country was rapidly modernizing and opening to Western influences, the image belongs to the genre of nishiki-e shinbun, or “newspaper prints.” These colorful single-sheet illustrations brought dramatic current events—often crimes or scandals—into homes across the country, blending traditional ukiyo-e techniques with the immediacy of modern journalism. Yoshitoshi, already known for his e...
About the Artist
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi · 1839–1892
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi was born on April 30, 1839, in the Shimbashi district of Edo, the city that would become Tokyo. At the age of eleven he was apprenticed to Utagawa Kuniyoshi, one of the great masters of the Japanese woodblock print, who gave the boy the artist name 'Yoshitoshi' as a mark of lineage within the Utagawa School. From Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi absorbed the full tradition of ukiyo-e — th...