Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861)

This extraordinary design of graffiti on a storehouse wall belongs to a group of prints produced by Kuniyoshi as an innovative way to evade the Tempo reforms which came in during 1842, which banned the depiction of actors in prints.

The whole group of prints consists of five sheets, comprising a triptych with a lower yellow border (to which this sheet belongs), and a diptych, with a lower black border.

For examples of the other sheets from the triptych to which this print belongs in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, see www.mfa.org accession numbers 11.27002 and 11.27004.

In addition to this there is a further triptych on the same theme but with a different title - Hakumensho kabe no mudagaki [One Hundred Laughing Graffiti Caricatures on the Wall], with no coloured border at the bottom. For this complete triptych see Yuriko Iwakiri and Amy Reigle Newland, Kuniyoshi: Japanese Master of Imagined Worlds, (Leiden, 2013), p. 156.

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