Cruelty And Carnage: Superviolent Art by Yoshiiku & Others

by Utagawa Yoshiiku (Artist), Jack Hunter (Editor)

Overview

Muzan-e ("cruel pictures") and Chimidoro-e ("bloody pictures") together constitute a significant strand of ukiyo-e, the populist art of late Edo-period Japan. The most famous example of this genre remains Eimei Nijuhasshuku (1868) by the artists Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku. Yoshiiku's violent contributions to this series are matched in horror by many other of his prints, ranging from news-sheet illustrations of misogynistic murder to kabuki scenes of torture and images of warriors harvesting severed heads in battle. Such gore-splashed pictures were also produced by numerous other artists, including Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi, Yoshiyuki, Kunichika, and the unsung creators of garish Osaka sex-crime news-sheets.

"Cruelty And Carnage", edited by Jack Hunter (who also edited the ground-breaking extreme ukiyo-e anthology "Dream Spectres"), collects and considers over 100 of the most blood-drenched and disturbing artworks produced by Yoshiiku and others, presented in large-format and full-colour throughout.

The Ukiyo-e Master Series: presenting seminal collections of art by the greatest print-designers and painters of Edo-period and Meiji-period Japan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781840683080
Publisher:	Shinbaku Books
Publication date:	06/30/2013
Series:	Ukiyo-e Master Series , #6
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Utagawa Yoshiiku (1833 - 1904) was a leading ukiyo-e artist and pupil of the master Kuniyoshi. He enjoyed a great rivalry with co-pupil Yoshitoshi, and in 1868 the pair collaborated on the notorious atrocity series Eimei Nijuhasshuku. In 1874 Yoshiiku was co-founder of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shinbun, a renowned illustrated broadsheet.

Jack Hunter is author and editor of over 20 previous books on cinema, including EROS IN HELL and MOONCHILD, as well as the counter-culture classics FREAK BABYLON and CHAPEL OF GORE AND PSYCHOSIS. After the success of his ukiyo-e study DREAM-SPECTRES (2010), he has mainly spent his time in Tokyo developing the Ukiyo-e Master Series.

Read an Excerpt

NISHIKI-E: BLOOD-ON-THE-STREETS
The garish illustrated news broadsheets known as shinbun nishiki-e were highly popular between 1874 and 1877, before slowly waning until their eventual demise in the 1880s. Among the main imprints under which they appeared were the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun, the Yubin Hochi Shinbun — for which Yoshitoshi executed a large number of commissions — and the Osaka Nichinichi Shinbun. These were the tabloids of their day, serving up picture-led bizarre or lurid stories for instant mass consumption. This sensationalism reached a peak with the publication in April 1875 by the Osaka Nichinichi Shinbun of a story known as the "Sashimi Murder-Suicide Case", with an explicitly gory image to accompany the outrageous text. In this exceptionally grotesque incident, a man in Tatsuno started sleeping with the family maid every night; consumed by jealousy, his wife finally snapped and butchered the girl with a carving-knife, cutting out her vulva and slicing it up as sashimi, which she fed to her husband upon his return. As he unwittingly devoured his concubine's raw labia, his wife committed hara-kiri (suicide by self-disembowelment). Although a true story, the print was quickly suppressed by the censor after much negative attention. Generally cruder than their Tokyo counterparts, Osaka newsheets were often more bloody, even featuring occasional nudity; associated artists included Yoshitaki, Sadanobu II, Shigehiro, and Yoshimitsu. ...