Japan: Toki Daishirô, from the series 'One Hundred Ghost Stories from China and Japan' (Wakan...

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (30 April 1839-9 June 1892) was a Japanese artist and Ukiyo-e woodblock print master. He is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing. He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras-the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing. By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.