“Kuniyoshi X” Postcard

Description

“Kuniyoshi Postcards”

When was the last time you looked into your letterbox and found personal mail? “A long time ago” you probably say. It is likely you yourself haven’t written any “snail mail” or postcards since the emergence of e-mail and electronic postcard services. Sending all your relatives Holiday Greetings with just one ‘click’ seemed so attractive. You even could make it ‘highly personalized’ with photo’s of you and your friends or your spouse and kids and send them over the internet. Or even better, order them to be printed and sent.

But that is not the same as picking up mail from the mailbox and while you walk back indulging your curiosity about “who wrote that lovely ‘wish’ – maybe even with an old-style fountain pen – on a postcard that delights the eye in such a way?” Experiencing the pleasure to place it in clear vision for the coming weeks, so the front and the back of that card will bring a smile on our face whenever it catches your attention again.

Appreciate the great craftsmanship and artistic value of Japanese woodblock prints called Ukyo-e on postcards. They will bring an atmosphere of tranquil existence—a floating world, as you will -, together with a touch of sensuality from the era of the Edo shogunate. On LoyaltyLove 11 different postcards are available from the artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

Background of Japanese Woodblock Prints

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art during the “Edo-era”; a period from 1603 to 1868 when the Tokugawa shogunate was in power and had its seat in Edo–nowadays Tokyo. The art contains mostly woodblock prints and paintings and became very popular in the European art world at the end of the nineteenth century. Western artists were intrigued by the original use of color, outline, realistic rendering and innovative asymmetrical compositions. “Japonism” had an influence on impressionism and Jugendstil. Van Gogh had a huge collection of Ukiyo-e pictures.

Edo’s rapid economic growth gave the lower merchant class the option to indulge in the entertainments of kabuki theater, geisha, and courtesans of the sole licensed red-light district, the “Yoshiwara”. Originally, Ukiyo is a combination of uki–which means sadness–and yo—means life. It reflects the Buddhist concept of life, involving a cycle of birth, suffering, death, and rebirth. However, during the early Edo period, another ideograph similarly pronounced as uki came into usage, which means “to float”. So, while one still can see the Ukiyo philosophy as “going with the flow in a floating world”, for many it evoked through the years an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance, which the connotations of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Ukiyo-e (the “e” stands for “picture”) depicted female beauties (bijin), kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers, but also scenes from history, folk tales, travel scenes, landscapes, flora, fauna, and erotica (shunga).

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861) – was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting. His first name Utagawa says he was a member of the Utagawa school. They say his rich use of color and textile patterns was based on his experience as a young pattern designer in the business of his father, who was a silk-dyer. Kuniyoshi is known for his landscapes, beautiful women, Kabuki actors, cats, mythical animals and the depiction of the battles of legendary samurai heroes. His artwork incorporated aspects of Western representation in landscape and caricature, like shading, perspective, and the use of western pigments.

About the prints:

1. “A Boat Cast Adrift”. Female warrior Omatsu and villainous samourai Akabori Mizuemon. Probably from a Kabuki play based on the famous “The Tale of Genji”.
2. “Girl Filling a Bucket with Sea Water”
3. “Lady of the Evening Faces”
4. “Little Purple Gromwell” (also related to “TheTale of Genji’)
5. Paragons of Filial Piety
6. Water Scene. Using Western perspective and stylized scenery (clouds and trees).
7. Princess Yaegaki
8. Three Beauties Playing Musical Instruments
9. Oiso, Odawara, Hakone, Mishima, Numazu
10. Minakuchi, Ishibe, Kusatsu, Otsu, Kyoto
11. View of Mt. Asama from the Usui Pass

Specifications

• 4/4 full bleed
• 300 GSM
• Paper thickness: 0.13″ (0.34 mm)
• Laminated feel
• White matte back with a small QR code or a bar code