小林清亲

Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林 清親; 10 September 1847 – 28 November 1915) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, best known for his colour woodblock prints and newspaper illustrations. His work documents the rapid modernization and Westernization Japan underwent during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and employs a sense of light and shade called kōsen-ga inspired by Western art techniques. His work first found an audience in the 1870s with prints of red-brick buildings and trains that had proliferated after the Meiji Restoration; his prints of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 were also popular. Woodblock printing fell out of favour during this period, and many collectors consider Kobayashi's work the last significant example of ukiyo-e.

Life and career

Kiyochika was born Kobayashi Katsunosuke (小林 勝之助) on 10 September 1847 (the first day of the eighth month of the ninth year of Kōka on the Japanese calendar) in a Kurayashiki in the Honjo neighborhood in Edo (modern Tokyo). His father was Kobayashi Mohē (茂兵衛), who worked as a minor official in charge of unloading rice collected as taxes. His mother Chikako (知加子) was the daughter of another such official, Matsui Yasunosuke (松井安之助). The 1855 Edo earthquake destroyed the family home but left the family unharmed.

Though the youngest of his parents' nine children, Kiyochika took over as head of the household upon his father's death in 1862 and changed his name from Katsunosuke. As a subordinate to a kanjō-bugyō official Kiyochika travelled to Kyoto in 1865 with Tokugawa Iemochi's retinue, the first shogunal visit to Kyoto in over two centuries. They continued to Osaka, where Kiyochika thereafter made his home. During the Boshin War in 1868 Kiyochika participated on the side of the shōgun in the Battle of Toba–Fushimi in Kyoto and returned to Osaka after defeat of the shōgun's forces. He returned by land to Edo and re-entered the employ of the shōgun. After the fall of Edo he relocated to Shizuoka, the heartland of the Tokugawa clan, where he stayed for the next several years.

Kiyochika returned to the renamed Tokyo in May 1873 with his mother, who died there that September. He began to concentrate on art and associated with such artists as Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai, under whom he may have studied painting. In 1875, he began producing series of ukiyo-e prints of the rapidly modernizing and Westernizing Tokyo and is said to have studied Western-style painting under Charles Wirgman. In August, 1876 he produced the first kōsen-ga (光線画, "light-ray pictures"), ukiyo-e prints employing Western-style naturalistic light and shade, possibly under the influence of the photography of Shimooka Renjō.

Inoue Yasuji began training under Kiyochika in 1878 and saw his own works published beginning in 1880. Kiyochika's house burned down in the Great Fire at Ryōgoku of 26 January 1881 while he was out sketching. He sketched the Great Fire at Hisamatsu-chō of 11 February, and these fires became the basis of well-received prints such as Fire at Ryogoku from Hama-cho and Outbreak of Fire Seen from Hisamatsu-cho. Demand for his prints decreased in the 1880s and Kiyochika turned to comic images for newspapers. The Dandan-sha publishing company employed him from late 1881, and caricatures of his appeared in each issue of the satirical Marumaru Chinbun from August 1882. He continued to produce prints, but at a less frequent pace.

These were produced primarily from 1876 to 1881; Kiyochika would continue to publish ukiyo-e prints for the rest of his life, but also worked extensively in illustrations and sketches for newspapers, magazines, and books. He also produced a number of prints depicting scenes from the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, collaborating with caption writer Koppi Dojin, penname of Nishimori Takeki (1861–1913), to contribute a number of illustrations to the propaganda series Nihon banzai hyakusen hyakushō ("Long live Japan: 100 victories, 100 laughs").

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 saw a revival in popularity for prints and Kiyochika was one of the most prolific producers of them. Thereafter the print market shrank, and Kiyochika's wife opened a business selling fans and postcards to help support them.……

节选，摘自英文维基百科「Kobayashi Kiyochika」，按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用。