Ukiyo-e Signature Sample Database

Fukushima Toshimitsu

A Tokyo-based designer of senso-e, with known works dated 1894, 1900, and 1904. Identified on an 1894 print as "Fukushima Toshimitsu" 福島年光, with an address in Kyōbashi Mizutanichō. Often sealed "Suidō shūjin" 翠堂主人.

I presume this to be the Toshimitsu 年光 named among living students on the Yoshitoshi Monument.

Ukiyo Toshimitsu

An Osaka-based illustrator. I can find no legal name or address for this artist, but every work I have located was produced by an Osaka publisher.

The print signed "Ōtsuki Toshimitsu" is the only example I have found using this gō. The signature is said by GUDJ to belong to Kobayashi Eisei, but I have placed it here with Ukiyo Toshimitsu on the grounds that: (1) the print was issued by an Osaka publisher, and (2) the signature more closely resembles that of Ukiyo Toshimitsu.

Works I have found date from 1877 to 1879.

I presume this to be the Toshimitsu 年光 named among deceased students on the Yoshitoshi Monument.

Kobayashi Takayoshi

A Tokyo-based artist, most of whose work illustrates episodes from the Boshin War. A sugoroku board from 1876 gives the artist's legal name as Kobayashi Takayoshi 小林隆吉. That print also lists an artist address — the first kanji of the address is unclear, but my best guess (shown below) is that it is in Shiba Karasumorimachi.

According to GUDJ, this is the artist who signed as Kanogen Fusakatsu 花の原房勝 (reading uncertain); I do not know on what basis this assertion rests. Neither of the two designs I know of bearing that signature give any clues to the identity of the artist.

I am aware of prints signed Toshimitsu 年充 from 1874 and 1876. GUDJ dates the series "Kunmō kinsei zusetsu" 訓蒙近世図説 to 1871, but all prints from that series that I have found identifiable date/censor seals on date from 1874. The prints signed "Kanogen Fusakatsu" date from 1874 and 1875.

This artist does not appear to be named on the Yoshitoshi Monument.

Kobayashi Eisei

A Tokyo-based artist identified in print colophons as "Kobayashi Eisei", written both as 古林栄成 and 小林栄成 (the first of these could also be read "Furubayashi Eisei"). I can detect no obvious pattern to the use of one spelling of the name versus the other. At first I took them to belong to two different people, but as the signatures and colophons that follow clearly show, they belong to the same artist.

Names employed by the artist in signatures include: Kōsai (高斎), Shinsai (進斎), Teisai (亭斎), Toshimitsu (年参), Toshimitsu (年光), and Toshiyama (年山). According to Ukiyoeshi den 浮世絵師伝 (1931), an artist possibly identical with this Toshimitsu signed as Toshimine 年峯 while living at Ginza Nichōme 10-banchi (see below), presumably before the name was adopted by Tsutsui Toshimine — I have not found any evidence of such a signature; perhaps "峯" is a mistranscription of "参"?

The earliest print I know of bearing an artist address puts the artist in Sarugakuchō Nichōme at the end of 1876. He moved frequently during the next two or so years, with at least five other addresses in Sarugakuchō identified in colophons from 1877 and 1878. Early 1879 found him at Ginza Nichōme 10-banchi, but by summer he had returned to an address in Sarugakuchō he had lived at in early 1877. By early 1881 he was back at Ginza Nichōme 10-banchi, where he appears to have settled more permanently.

Known works date from c.1874 to 1886.

This is clearly the Kobayashi Toshimitsu 小林年参 named on the Yoshitoshi Monument.