Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Nobukazu Yosai
Japanese; 19th-century, 20th-century
Omaha, NE: Joslyn Art Museum
50%
The Attack on Weihaiwei: The Taking of the Hundred Foot Cliff. c1895 Color woodcut and ink on paper
I suppose this is the ukiyo-e version of a propaganda picture such as Goya’s Third of May 1808; the same treatment as in that canvas is deployed here, with the evil enemy in bland and rigid ranks but our brave heroes full of life and movement, and therefore more human. This print was made after the opening of Japanese culture to Western influences; perhaps, indeed, Nobukazu was aware of Goya’s work? As a ukiyo-e print this one falls profoundly short of the gorgeous meaninglessness espoused by most practitioners of the craft. Absent are the ethereal gradations of color present in the best work of Hiroshige, and the subject itself is much too sentimental. Instead of an exquisitely inflected desire, this print only evokes the rougher emotions of patriotism. The nervous mother to the left would have worked just fine on her own without anything else. In that sense, then, the entire rest of the picture is superfluous. (WC, 2025)