Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III)

"What about Kunisada?" The question isn´t already answered. There is still a lot of questionmarks to the ouevre of one of the most prolific Japanese Ukiyo-e artists. So the idea has been growing that it should be necessary first to collect his huge work in a catalogue and then some more answers can be given. After seven years of researching a summary is given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunisada (many thanks to Andrew Kowalczuk for the English translation and some helpful completions).

In summer 1999 I started searching the internet for Kunisada prints. Meanwhile around 17.000 designs which represent around 26.500 sheets can be found in my catalogue and for the moment c. 4.500 prints, mostly ordered by series are displayed on this site.

You also can find a list of around 1000 identified series "Kunisada´s series list", a reference list (books and internet sites), a site with Kunisada´s signatures and seals , a list of kabuki actors portrayed by Kunisada and a list of kabuki plays illustrated by Kunisada.

Please be aware! If you ask me a question via email allow your spam filter to pass my re-email through!

memorial portrait of Kunisada by Kunimaro

The files on this site are from different sources of the internet and literature and therefore most of the files are not of professional quality.
Due to restricted webspace only thumbnails and small images are available.

I´ll continue to publish as many series as possible and to give as much data as I can find out. So come back from time to time to see new series.

Please enjoy the site and help me to complete the series with missing prints and informations.
Please send new informations and files to horstgraebner@kunisada.de . Also thanks for feedback and bug reports.

For the friends of Kunisada's great contemporaries, Hiroshige and Kuniysohi, two sites can be recommended:
The "Kuniyoshi Project", a growing site maintained by William Pearl and John Roden's site "The Woodblock Prints of Ando Hiroshige".
Here you find the sites for two of the notable followers of the great masters: Chikanobu presented by Garry Gross and Yoshitoshi presented by Noel Chiappa and Jason M. Levine.