Posts in Category: september 10

Kobayashi Kiyochika

On July 25, 2026 - 19th Century, 20th Century, Japanese, september 10

Kobayashi Kiyochika, September 10, 1847 – November 28, 1915, was a Japanese painter, print designer, and illustrator active from the late Edo period through the Meiji era. Born in Honjo, Edo, as Kobayashi Katsunosuke, he came from a family connected to the Tokugawa shogunate administration and left with the Tokugawa retinue after the restoration of imperial rule in 1868. He returned to Tokyo in 1874 and began producing woodblock prints there in 1876.

Kiyochika was largely self-taught. He associated with Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai, though the extent of formal study with either artist is uncertain; he also engaged with Western pictorial methods circulating in Yokohama and Tokyo. From 1876 to 1881, he made ninety-three views of Tokyo, and he later worked in book, magazine, and newspaper illustration, painting, and prints relating to the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars.

In 1894, Kiyochika opened an art school. His students included Inoue Yasuji, Taguchi Beisaku, and Tsuchiya Kōitsu. Principal collections of his work include the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Honolulu Museum of Art; the Ota Memorial Museum of Art; and the British Museum.