A Japanese Menagerie

Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831-1889) is considered to be an important successor to artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Kyōsai was also Japan’s first political caricaturist. He was imprisoned a number of times by the shogunate for his disrespectful art. When not painting caricatures he often chose subjects from folklore, nature, religion, and the Nô drama. Harold Stern, former director of the Freer Gallery of Art, proposed mounting the first major exhibition of Kyōsai’s work but that plan was dropped with Stern’s untimely death in 1976. An exhibition was finally mounted in 1993 at the British Museum. The catalog for that exhibition was titled: "Demon of Painting: the Art of Kawanabe Kyōsai." This book, published by the British Museum in 2006, highlights some of the most appealing parts of Kyōsai’s work. There are pictures of cats and crows, fish and birds, puppies and frogs. The volume also includes several introductory essays which provide the historical context for this artist.