BD. Edmund Blunden

11. ‘Ghosts-Grotesques: The Curious Colour Prints of Kuniyoshi’. Japan Advertiser, 17 October 1926, p. 6.

Again Blunden reveals an interest in and understanding of ukiyoe that is absent in his poems (see also 10 and 42b). Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Ap) ‘had a most imperfect sense of the unity and harmony of a great work’ and ‘a junk-shop style mainly unpleasing’, but demonstrated a ‘fertility in fancies of the grim or grotesque . . . odd enough to attract attention and keep it’. Includes detailed description of a print from a series depicting scenes from the Chûshingura (Ap) , and evaluation of prints from two other series, Scenes from the Life of Nichiren and Sixty-Nine Views of the Kisokaidô, along with allusion to Hokusai’s (Ap) ‘Great Wave’. Reprinted in 42.