Of Brigands and Bravery Hardcover

First edition. Octavo. Hardcover. Very good. Near fine. 200 pages, 74 colour plates, 50 colour and black and white illustrations. This is the first monograph in English on the impressive series of 74 prints illustrating figures from Utakawa Kuniyoshi's Suikoden. The Suikoden (commonly known in English as The Water Margin) is the Japanese adaptation of the 14th-century Chinese vernacular novel, the Shui Hu Zhuan, which recounts the exploits of a group of rebels on Mount Liang under the leadership of the brave and upright Song Jiang. The Suikoden was enormously popular in Japan during the 19th century, and it was Kuniyoshi's initial designs for the series of single-sheet prints The One Hundred and Eight Heroes of the Suikoden (Tsuzoku Suikoden goketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori) - in which the full-length portraits of the heroes are charged with a new sense of dynamism - that stimulated the Suikoden craze in Edo. This book reproduces all 74 prints from the series in full colour; each is accompanied by an explanatory text. The publication also provides supplementary information on topics specifically related to the series, such as tattoos.
200 pages
Published on 1 June 2003 by Hotei Publishing House (first published on 1 August 1998) .