Eiji Yoshikawa
Musashi
In the manner of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
- 60 plates
- Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
The book
The same book. A boy from a losing army becomes the most famous swordsman in Japan by, mostly, declining to fight.
Why Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) is the last great master of the woodblock print and the one who took it somewhere violent and psychological. He is a near-exact contemporary of Doré, working the same decades on the opposite side of the world, which makes this the sharpest possible comparison plate for plate.
Where Doré builds a scene, Yoshitoshi builds a figure and lets the ground fall away.
What to look for
Flatness used deliberately. No aerial perspective, no modelled shadow — depth comes from overlap and from where the eye is made to travel.
