Received Back into the Moon Palace-Taketori (Bamboo Cutter) from the series Twelve Aspects of the Moon
c. 1885/92
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk
Dimensions
105.5 × 40.7 cm (41 9/16 × 16 in.)
Classification
scroll
Department
Arts of Asia
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
212351
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is a well-known Japanese legend in which an old man finds a baby girl hidden in a bamboo stalk while cutting the plantsto make baskets. He takes her home and he and his wife raise her as their own. The girl, Kaguyahime (Shining Princess), grows into a beautiful young woman and eventually returns to her home in the Moon Palace without accepting any of the proposals made by her suitors, including the emperor. This print illustrates the moment when the bamboo cutter be...
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...