Kintoki-yama no tsuki

The boy with legendary strength, Kintoki, acting as referee in the sumo match between a monkey and a rabbit.
N° 87 from the set: Tsuki No hyakushi (One Hundred Aspects of the Moon)
1890
Oban
Nishiki-e
Good proof, tiny dirt on the outer borders, embossing in the white of one of the cartridges and in the rabbit's fur.

Kintoki's father, a dissolute ronin, abandoned him at his birth on Mount Ashigara, not far from Fuji. He was taken in and raised by Yamauba, the woman-spirit who inhabited the mountains and embodied, in certain respects, the feminine side of primal savagery. She named him Kintarõ, the “Golden Boy”. He grew up among the mountain animals and the tengu, the birdmen who taught Yoshitsune martial arts. The child learned a lot from their contact, and quickly developed prodigious strength.
One day when the warrior Yorimitsu, also called Raiko, was hunting in the vicinity of Mount Ashigara, an extraordinarily robust child, with skin the color of brick, suddenly appeared to him. He was uprooting a large tree to make a bridge that would allow the animals, his friends, to cross the river. Stunned, Yorimitsu convinced Yamauba to let him take the child to make him a hero.
Renamed Kintoki, the young man became one of Raiko's four main lieutenants, proving his strength and bravery on many occasions. Yoshitoshi shows him battling monsters and demons in a multitude of prints. Perhaps the most famous example is the 1886 diptych from the Yoshitoshi manga series, where a superbly drawn spider-woman weaves her golden web around the sleeping Kintoki. The two characters in Kintoki's name mean "gold" and "time", but as with many Japanese names, the idea of ​​a literal translation is somewhat futile. This change of name should above all be interpreted as marking the transition from boy to man.
In ukiyo-e, Kintarõ is usually depicted in the company of mountain animals. We also see him as a wrestler, throwing a bear to the ground. Here he referees a parody of hand-to-hand combat between a monkey and a rabbit, two animals that we saw playing together in Sun Wukong's evocation. The color of his skin refers to his name - Kuniyoshi already liked to use shades of red to flatter the roundness of his body. Dressed as a boy, he displays the rolls of flesh which, in the minds of the Japanese and Chinese, denote a healthy child.
His face beaming with happiness, Kintarõ watches his friends play. A branch of persimmon tree is placed between him and the animals: its persimmons perhaps allude to the fruits that the monkey stole from the immortals, or to the extraordinary powers of Kintaro. The fruit pigment has oxidized, taking on an interesting surface texture.
The grain of the wood gives body to the rock, and the rabbit's coat is beautifully embossed.

In : CENT ASPECTS DE LA LUNE, John STEVENSON, 2018, Editions Citadelles et MAZENOD

The set “One Hundred Aspects of the Moon”, inspired by historical or legendary stories from China and Japan, is Yoshitoshi's most famous series, begun in 1885 and completed just before his death in 1892. Already at the time, each new print published was an event, the prints often sold out on the morning of their publication.