Takehisa Yumeji 1884-1934, Shamisen, Woodcut Print

Size: 5 by 3 1/2 in. (12.6 by 8.3 cm.) All measurements are approximate.

Takehisa Yumeji is the first teacher of the artist Feng Zikai. A great writer, Kawabata Yasunari who admired Yumeji and said that his goals were always aligned with Yumeji's achievements. It's incredible that Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Ye Lingfeng and many other famous Chinese artists are all his loyal fans. Surprisingly, the dream of these famous people was not a beautiful woman, but a male painter.
The word painter or artist is far from enough to describe Takehisa Yumeji's art achievements. He's also a poet, novelist, singer, framing designer and more. Monji had many identities, and in each of them, he left behind a staggering number of creations. Paintings with poems, poems with paintings, poems with music, serialized novels with illustrations, songbooks, picture book bindings, human figures and pattern designs. This cross-border, mix-and-match creative gesture allowed Yumeji to break through the border between so-called pure art and practical art such as design and craft, and has since opened up a new era in the world of Eastern painting.
More importantly, the beauty of his paintings attracts the most attention. Unlike the common Ukiyo-e style of women, the women in Yumeji's paintings seem to be more emotionally subtle and introspective, and they have an exclusive term called "Yumeji-style beauty".
The poet Atsuo Oki once commented, "These women, no matter which one they are, all have melancholy faces, with large round eyes, long eyelashes, and a sad, despondent look, with a fragile beauty that is hard to describe."
Today, even in Japan, the original beauty paintings of Yumeji are rare and precious.

Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934), was a leading figure in the Taisho Romanticism movement which combined Western romanticism with native Japanese styles during the Taisho Period (1912-1926). He was a painter, writer, poet, bookbinder and illustrator whose drawings of women with thin bodies and large eyes filled with melancholy were known as Yumeji Bijin-ga. During the height of his popularity he was called the "modern Utamaro" and the Japanese "Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch". His prints epitomized the relationship between popular art and the woodblock. He is the printmaker "who best exemplifies the Taisho era."

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