| | Re: Tenpo Reforms and "Actor Landscapes" (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-13) |
 | | I believe the main impetus for the types of series you have identified ("Mitate sanjûrokkasen no uchi", "Chûshingura", "Edo meisho zue", "Tôkaidô gojûsan tsugi no uchi") were the lingering effects of the Tenpô Reforms (1842-47) instituted by Mizuno Tadakuni (1774-1851), the chief councilor to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi. |
 | | Although Tadakuni fell from power in 1843, the effects of his reforms lasted for some years and publishers returned only gradually to issuing prints that explicitly identified actors (that is why so many prints from the early 1840s-early 1850s do not bear the names of the actors). |
 | | Kunisada had earlier in the mid-1820s designed finely printed sets in the small koban format of beauties placed before landscapes, and again in the late 1830s when he drew beauties before scenes derived from Hiroshige’s "Tôkaidô gojûsan tsugi no uchi" but in the chûban format. |
| www.shogungallery.com /wwwboard/archive/message4/16.html (812 words) |