Artist: Takeuchi Keishu
Title: White-Robed Kannon
Date: 1900
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Source:
Robyn Buntin of Honolulu
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Description:
This print is from a novel about a young woman named Teru and an artist named Michikage. Because of the differences between their fathers the young couple cannot marry. In time Teru, like the merciful Kannon, devotes her life to helping others who were unjustly treated by her father. Kuchi-e were woodblock prints used as foldout frontispieces for novels or inserts into magazines from around 1895 to 1915. They were meant as a visual aid and as a sales promotion at the same time. In competition with Western lithographic or photo-mechanical printing techniques modern to the times, kuchi-e were usually well executed, sometimes in deluxe printing with such lavish techniques as mica or embossing. The main subjects were bijin-ga or beautiful women, often in a Western style presaging the Taisho modern women. For more on this kuchi-e and its story, please refer to: "Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints" by Helen Merritt and Nanako Yamada, pp68-70.
