was a designer of ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

Japanese woodblock prints

Woodblock printing in Japan

Woodblock printing in Japan is a technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre; however, it was also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of movable type, but was only...

 and an illustrator of books and newspapers who was active from about 1850 to about 1880. He was born in Edo (modern Tokyo), but neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. He was an important pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi who excelled in prints of warriors, kabuki

Kabuki

is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...

 actors, beautiful women, and foreigners (Yokohama-e

Yokohama-e

Yokohama-e are ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints depicting foreigners and scenes of Yokohama. In 1859, the port of Yokohama was opened to foreigners, and ukiyo-e artists, primarily of the Utagawa school, produced more than 800 different woodblock prints in response to a general curiosity about...

). He may not have seen any of the foreign scenes he depicted.