Kawanable Kyōsai’s Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (1890)
Kawanabe
Kyōsai (1831–1889), aka “The Demon of Painting”, composed this book of
woodblock illustrations toward the end of a life that had begun during
the Edo period, when Japan was still a feudal country, and ended in the
midst of the Meiji period, when the country was transforming into a
modern state.
Kyōsai
was by all accounts the bad boy artist of his era. Considered both
Japan’s first political caricaturist and one of the first authors of a
manga magazine (Eshunbun Nipponchi), Kyōsai was arrested by the shogunate three times for his commitment to free expression. Also, he made no secret of his love for sake.
Kyōsai’s
version was, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which houses
the book, one of the artist’s most popular volumes, offering “a
spectacular visual encyclopedia of supernatural creatures of premodern
Japanese folklore”. (To see more examples of such supernatural
creatures, also see our post on this Edo-era scroll.)
One
can see why it was so popular. Narratively, it paves the way for the
fantastic parade with two woodblocks: the first depicts a group of
adults and children gathered around a coal fire to hear ghosts stories,
the second a man (probably Kyōsai) setting down his calligraphy brush
and extinguishing the lamp in preparation for the night in which the
demons will appear.
Each
double-page of the book is arranged in such a way as to join up with
the next, as though a continuous scroll is divided over the pages of a
book. Though be aware that, of course, the book is bound on the right
and so runs counter to the usual left-to-right of English-language
books, and so also counter to how our gallery below is set up to
display!