Kitao Masanobu (北尾政演) (artist 1761 – 1816)
Iwase Sei (family name - 巌瀬醒)Yūsei (azana - 酉星)
Denzō (nickname - 伝蔵)
Jintarō (nickname - 甚太郎)
Rissai (gō - 葎斎)
Santō Kyōden (nom de plume - 山東京伝)
Links
Biography:
Painter, print artist and author. Famous for paintings of beauties (bijin) and book illustrations; as artist used name Kitao Masanobu. Published novel 'Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki' in 1785 under the name Santo Kyoden and gave up print-making for literary career. A senior pupil of Shigemasa, Masanobu produced some single-sheet prints, illustrated books, illustrated 'kyoka' anthologies and paintings, but the vast majority of his works were illustrations for novelettes. His works of comic fiction are generally highly intellectual and expository in nature.
The information shown above is taken directly from the British Museum web site.
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Miriam Wattles in her doctoral dissertation, 'The Life and Afterlives of Hanabusa Itcho (1652-1724)' on pages 189-190 said of Santō Kyoden: "This interwoven form of bits and pieces depicts an idealized past culture that was a projection of the present milieu of Kyōden. Kyōden was someone who spent much of his life in the demi-monde of Yoshiwara, having married two courtesans in the course of his lifetime. Born son of a pawnshop owner on the backs of the Sumida not far from the Yoshiwara and Kabuki districts, Kyōden was nurtured in the circle of one of the most major publishers of the day, Tsutaya Jūsaburō (1750-1797). Starting out as an ukiyo-e artist and illustrator who used the name Kitao Masanobu, Kyōden eventually focused exclusively on producing gesaku texts for a number of publishers, often with the best-known ukiyo-e luminaries of the day illustrating them. An influential personage in the Edo of his day, Kyōden felt a connection with the recent past of haikai and early ukiyo-e in his own gesaku and ukiyo-e endeavors. Kyōden's feeling of affinity with his predecessor Itchō must have been all the stronger after he was shackled for fifty days in 1791 for having produced "depraved" sharebon type of fiction the year before."
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A taste of the vulgar
In the autumn of 1793, the already-famous author and woodblock print (ukiyoe 浮世絵) artist Santō Kyōden (山東京伝 1761–1816) opened a tobacco supplies and paper store in Ginza, the most fashionable shopping district in the bustling capital of Edo, Japan. Though the shop's success was certainly of no consequence to Kyōden, who had long been making a handsome living from his brush, he took business seriously and prided himself on being at the vanguard of style: sourcing new patterns of paper, for instance, or purveying an innovative design of tobacco pouch. Within two years of his opening shop, rival merchants began marketing cheaper knock-offs of his goods, to which Kyōden responded by distributing small handbills with advertisements for his shop on them. The twist: the advertisements generally contained picture puzzles, that is, rebuses. As ephemera, very few of these survive. Among those extant (in reproductions, if nothing else), perhaps the most well-known is an example from the ninth month of 1795..."
Quoted from: "Visual vernacular: rebus, reading, and urban culture in early modern Japan" by Charlotte Eubank, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, Volume 28, 2012.
Later Eubank wrote of this rebus/print: "...full of honorifics in deference to his audience (former and prospective customers), the message is fairly simple: it announces an influx of new stock, gives Kyōden's warmest regards to his regular customers, and invites potential buyers to stop by his shop in Ginza to see the array of new products. Ever with an eye to business, though, the clever Kyōden has reworked this none-too-original message into rebus format, and printed it out to use as, among other things, wrapping paper for purchases made in his shop. The novelty of the wrapping paper brought to his store a steady stream of interested customers, who were presumably eager as much for their own copy of the rebus as for the purchase which it enclosed."
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As an illustrator for book publishers
Masanobu drew illustrations for Tsuruya Kiemon in 1779-80, 1783-84, 1786, 1788, 1790-94, 1796-1804 and1813; for Iseya Jisuke in 1780-83; for Matsumura Yahei in 1780-81; for Iwatoya Ginpachi in 1801; for Okumuruya Genroku in 1782-83; for Hakuhō-dō in 1783-84; for Tsutaya Jūzaburō in 1780-82, 1784-94 and 1796-1805; for Enomotoya Kichibei in 1786-90. for Nishinomiya Shinroku in 1788-89; Izumiya Ichibei in 1786-90; for Owada Yasuemon in 1789; Yamaguchiya Chūsuke in 1798; for Kawachiya Genshichi in 1810 and 1816-17.
