Posted by Alec W. (2.25.206.237) on February 17, 2022 at 01:15:17:
In Reply to: Unknown Print posted by Andreas on February 16, 2022 at 14:41:07:
The artist is Matsuura Moriyoshi 松浦守美 (1824-1896), an artist who worked in Toyama, which was long the capital of the patent-medicine industry in Japan. The publisher seal here, reading "Taishō", was used around the 1860s by a Toyama publisher about whom little else seems to be known.
The upper right inscription reads Tōsei 当世 ("present-day"), and the center "kodomo" 子供 ("children"). I can't make out the leftmost text.
Prints from Toyama were typically "medicine prints", inexpensive prints produced to be given as gifts accompanying the sale of a patent medicine. There's an interesting discussion of this phenomenon in the book "Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards" by Rebecca Salter.
-A