Yoshida family artists

The Yoshida family of artists is an important line of Japanese artists that reaches unbroken from the early 19th century to the present.

Just how far back before that their work extended is unclear, but the first artists who appear in recorded history served the Nakatsu clan who lived in Oita Prefecture, on Kyūshū, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. (A Japanese Legacy, 18ff) Late in the century they moved to Tokyo.

Over the past 150 years the ten leading Yoshida artists, extending through four generations, have used a wide variety of media, styles, and techniques. In this way the family embodies an outline of main developments in modern Japanese art history. Within the family there have been five women artists, in three generations, in effect a case study for the emergence of women in public life and artistic leadership in that country.(Allen et al., 152-3) Finally, the Yoshidas represent an interesting example of the way the Japanese people have often used adoption and arranged marriages to reinforce certain desirable traits associated with a family’s name. (Modern Japanese Prints, 167)(Skibbe, Yoshida Toshi, 34)

Their artistic trajectory began modestly.

Prior to the mid-19th century, the Yoshida artists serving the Nakatsu clan presumably provided work in a traditional Japanese style on silk, paper, or board. But then in the Meiji Period, when the structures of Japanese society were changing radically, a young artist by the name of Kasaburo Haruno changed his name to Kasaburo Yoshida (1861–1894) when he married Rui Yoshida and was adopted into her family. (Japanese names here are in the Western order, first the individual name, followed by the family name.) Kasaburo shifted from being a traditional Japanese style artist to becoming a pioneer in early Western style art. Whereas he had been serving the clan, he now became an art teacher in one of the schools established by the clan.(Allen et al., 19-20)

Then, because Kasaburo and Rui at that time had four daughters and no son, they adopted Hiroshi Ueda who became Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950) as he joined the family and married one of the daughters, Fujio Yoshida (1887–1987). (A Japanese Legacy, 24, 27) He began with watercolors, but soon became a prize-winning Western-style artist in oils, and late in his career led in a thorough renewal in Japanese woodblock art.(Tadao et al., 178-80)

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