Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861, Japanese)

Five Cats
Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861, Japanese) was an Edo period master of ukiyo-e wood block print. His depictions included landscapes, beautiful women (geishas), Kabuki actors, and cats. Influenced by ukiyo-e warrior prints, by age 12 he had impressed the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Toyokuni and joined his studio in 1811. His first works were book illustrations and then he turned to warrior prints. Kuniyoshi was a popular teacher and Yoshitoshi, Yoshitora, Yoshijku, Yoshikazu, and Yoshifuji were among his students.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi was a great cat lover, and it was said that his studio was full of them. Often he could be seen working with a kitten snuggled up in his kimono. An apprentice, Yoshimune, reported that when one of Kuniyoshi’s cats died, he would have it sent to a nearby temple, and a Buddhist altar for his deceased cats was erected in his home. There he kept tablets with the cats’ Buddhist names on the altar.

Kuniyoshi’s love of his felines spilled over into his art. Cats fill many of his compositions and he even began to give Kabuki actors cat faces. Kuniyoshi’s Ume no haru gjusantsugi was performed in 1835. A cat has shape-shifted into an old woman while a cat wearing a napkin dances while a cat licks the lamp. The cloth on the cat’s head represents the folk belief that cats would steal napkins and would dance together and howl “Neko ja!” (We are cats!). Cats often times licked Japanese lamps of the period because they were fueled with fish oil.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Ume no haru gojusantsugi, 1835, PD A kabuki that was performed in 1835 (Tenpo 6) in Ichimura-za. It depicts a cat that has shapeshifted into an old woman, a

Ume no haru gojusanttsugi
1835

Several more similar depictions of the cat witch follow:

Cat Witch of Okabe

The Old Story of the Okazaki Cat Demon in an Old Temple Inabanosuke and Teranishi Kanshin

The actor
Onoe Kikugorô III as the Cat-Witch

An Imaginary Scene of the Origin of the Cat Stone at Okazaki, from the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road

The actor Ichumura-meeting a cat ghost

Utagawa Kuniyoshi also depicted cats in their every day activities as well as using them to design letters of the alphabet.

A Cat Making Mice Fearful, by Kuniyoshi Utagawa, ca 1841

A Cat Making Mice Fearful, ca 1841

Cats suggested as the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido

Detail
Cats suggested as the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido

Four Cats in Different Poses

Cat and Koi Pond

Cats Join to Form the Vocabulary of Fish Bonito

Cats forming the characters for catfish, 1843

Cats forming the characters for Bonite (katsuo), from the series Cat Homophones (Neko no Atej

Koniyoshi also depicted the cat with priests and geishas (beautiful women). In the upper right-hand corner of the print below is the 9th century monk Bukan with a tiger. The monk was known to have ridden a tiger to scare his followers. Here he is shown awakening from a nap, and in the foreground a woman and her cat are also awakening from a nap, perhaps mirroring the Zen priest’s powers.

Zen Priest Bukan with cat from the series Sixteen Female Sennin Charming Creatures. Print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Zen Priest Bukan from the series Sixteen Female Sennin Charming Creatures

25 Chrysanthemums

Geisha and Cat

Woman Reading the Paper with her Cat

Wanting to tweeze the nape of the neck (cats playing) ukiyo-e woodblock print, 1852

Geisha and Cat

The Third Princess and Cat

Geisha Holding a Cat

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Geisha Spanking a Cat

Geisha Spanking a Cat Making off with a Fish

Kamenoya Osamaru, Hisakataya, 1832

Kuniyoshi also depicted cats as people and as Kabuki actors.

Cats’ cooling off on a boat

Cats Performing in the Michiyuki Scene in the play Neko yanagi sakari no tsukikage from the series Fashionable Cat Frolics

Here a courtesan named Matsuyama and her lover Kyūbei are eloping. Items typically associated with cats such as gold coins and bells are on their kimonos, and clam shells and mackerel fillets take the place of willow flowers and their leaves.

The Scene of Torture by Scolding from the play The Stinky Sleeve from the series Fashionable Cat Frolics

The series Fashionable Cat Frolics written by Santō Kyōzan is based on Kabuki play parodies and was illustrated by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Kyōzan not unlike Kuniyoshi was also a lover of cats. Due to mid-nineteenth century censorship, paraodies such as this became popular. Actors’ and courtesans’ likenesses could not be shown, so to get around this, they were portrayed as cats. The above print is from the play The Stinky Sleeve, a tale about the Genji clan and Heike clan who fought one another during the Heian period. Here, a Genji clansman questions his lover Ayako concerning the Heike chieftain.

Dancing Cats

Fashionable Cat Juggler with a Ball

Fashionable Cats Juggling Balls ukiyō-e woodblock print, c. 1841, Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Fashionable Cats Juggling Balls
c. 1841

Cat lady, Octopus. Ukiyo-e. Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Cat Lady and Octopus

Two Bakenekos

Rats Escape from Cat

Giant Snow Cat

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