Dream Spectres

Book excerpt: UKIYO-E -- "images from the floating world" -- were the most popular art-form of 19th century Japan. Like modern-day manga, these prints could be mass-produced and were admired by people from all sectors of society; and as in manga, the art of ukiyo-e included significant sub-genres dealing in violence, erotica and horror. With unflinching images of weird sex, bloody carnage and grotesque, demonic ghosts and monsters, "Dream Spectres" is a powerful collection of the extremes of ukiyo-e, featuring the work of such artists as Yoshitoshi, Ekin, Kunichika, Yoshiiku, Kunisada, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitsuya, Hiroshige, Kyosai, and Chikanobu. "Dream Spectres" features over 170 amazing full-colour images, including the complete Eimei Nijuhasshuku ("28 Blood Atrocities") of Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku, and ranges in content from bondage and bestiality to decapitations, demons and designs for classic irezumi (body tattoos). This is Japanese art not only at its extremes of imagination, but often at its most highly accomplished and innovative. This new, revised, enlarged and expanded edition of "Dream Spectres" is presented in large-format and full-colour throughout. The Ukiyo-e Master Series: presenting seminal collections of art by the greatest print-designers and painters of Edo-period and Meiji-period Japan.