Taguchi Beisaku

Taguchi Beisaku 田口米作 (1864-1903)

BIOGRAPHY

Beisaku [gō (artist name): Ōsen] – Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, the son of a rice merchant, he moved to Tokyo in 1873, where he first studied with Nakamura Banzan 中村晩山 (b. 1834), a Maruyama-Shijō school painter, and later, from 1881, with Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), one of the great late period ukiyo-e artists. Little is known about Beisaku's relationship with Kiyochika, although it is reported that he first met Kiyochika at the age of 13 while he was sketching at the Atago Shrine in Tokyo.1 His name appears as “Taguchi Yoneharu”2 (presumably his given name) on two of the prints in Kiyochika’s 1884-1885 series One Hundred Views of Musashi as a “touching-up brush.” Kiyochika would lead Beisaku into caricature, enabling him to succeed Kiyochika as chief cartoonist for the Marumaru chinbun in 1892. As a cartoonist he is credited as playing an important role in the creation of narrative strips. He created the first serialized short narrative cartoon in 1896, a six-panel cartoon run over three issues. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Beisaku emerged as a print artist in his own right, designing several war triptychs that were reminiscent of Kiyochika's work, but far more skilled in the presentation of figures. He was director of Kiyochika’s art school in the mid-1890s, and thereafter continued work at the Marumaru chinbun.

He died young in 1903 at the age of 39 and his grave can be seen at the Inkoin Temple, 2-6-8 Kotobuki, Daito-ku, Tokyo. Beisaku left several disciples - Takita Gyuho (?-?) and Nagata Kinshin 永田錦心 (1885-1927), who went to study with Kobayashi Kiyochika after their master's death.

1 “'Shikisai-Shinron' of Taguchi Beisaku and Its Surroundings" (田口米作の『色彩新論』とその周辺), Kunimoto Norifumi (國本学史), Faculty of Letters, Keio University (慶應義塾大学文学部)

2 Also seen as Taguchi Yonesaku.