Blood Wars : 100 Warrior Triptychs From History & Myth

A handsome book of Yoshitoshi Tsukioka's illustrations of mythic warriors and legendary battles

Ukiyo-e: 'Pictures of the floating world.' The floating world a transient realm of pleasures, horrors, and dreams. Ukiyo-e, depictions of this shadowy projection of the human mind, formed the mainstay of Japanese paintings and woodblock prints produced between the 17th and 20th centuries. Musha-e: 'Ukiyo-e of warriors.' Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, perhaps the best-known of all 19th century ukiyo-e artists, created illustrations of mythic warriors and legendary battles throughout his career, including years spent documenting contemporaneous civil conflicts. This book collects 100 such prints by Yoshitoshi, often violent and bloody in nature, ranging in subject from the internecine decapitation wars of the 12th to 16th centuries to the uprising of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, the last stand of Japan's samurai class against the new imperial government.

The selection of works is also limited to the triptych format, which gave ukiyo-e artists the freedom to express their phantasies as narratives in a kinetic, detailed image frame. Editor Ringo Yoshida was born and lives in Osaka, Japan. He is a longterm collector and historian of 19th century ukiyo-e.

Details