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We accept payment by American Express, JCB, Maestro, MasterCard, Visa and Visa Debit in a number of currencies.
For Online Orders delivered to the UK, we only accept payment in UK Pounds Sterling. If you choose to pay using a payment card with a foreign currency-denominated account for an international delivery, the payment will still be taken in UK Pounds Sterling. We are not responsible for any incurring fees that your bank may charge you while the conversion takes place. The currency rate is displayed as a guide only. The final amount you will be charged will depend on your payment provider.
‘The Tale of Genji’ (Genji Monogatari) is a full-length Japanese novel written by Murasaki Shikibu, a talented aristocratic female poet from the Fujiwara clan in the middle of the Heian era (794 to 1185). Consisting of 54 chapters in trilogy, it is a biographical tale of the main character Prince Genji and his descendants after his death, which continues for 70 years, with 500 castings and more or less 800 poems. It recounted Prince Genji’s involvement with ladies of the court, but it was more than just a romantic love story of high society. It was a psychological insight into the principals of human life, being read by enlightened and educated nobles in the Imperial Court. 'The Tale of Genji' is now considered to be a Japanese classic masterpiece and one of the most influential work of literature in history. It has also been translated in numerous foreign languages since.
In the Edo period (1603-1868), ‘The Tale of Genji’ was imagined and reimagined countless times. In both archaic and contemporary forms, the story had been relocated from the old capital of Kyoto to the new audience Edo. A key proponent to the reinvigoration of this classic tale was the extremely popular serialisation of Ryutei Tanehiko's (1783-1842) illustrated book ‘False Murasaki and a Rural Genji’, a loose adaptation that interwove contemporary culture to the original plot. The text of Tanehiko’s Genji was illustrated by renowned artist Kunisada and the series achieved enormous commercial success, giving birth to a whole new genre in the world of woodblock prints: genji-e (pictures of Genji).
Yoshitora Utagawa was a woodblock print artist active towards the end of the 19th century in Japan. Born in Edo (today’s Tokyo), neither his date of birth nor date of death is known. Yoshitora was a pupil of Kuniyoshi Utagawa (1798-1861), however, he was expelled due to artistic differences. He went on his own path and changed his artist name to Mosai, producing prints of warriors, kabuki actors, beautiful women, and foreigners in particular (Yokohama-e).
The limited contact with the West imposed by the Japanese regime in the Edo period (1603-1868) created endless curiosity that artists were eager to satisfy, although the situations they imagined were sometimes far from being accurate. It is evident from these prints that the Japanese were fascinated by the clothing, the strange habits and the occupations of the foreigners.
For much of the Edo period Japan adopted a sakoku (closed country) policy. Sakoku was a system in which strict regulations were placed on commerce and foreign relations by the shogunate and certain feudal domains. Trade was limited, except for the port of Nagasaki where the Dutch and Chinese were the only ones allowed to operate. In 1859 the port of Yokohama was opened to foreigners, and ukiyo-e artists, primarily of the Utagawa school, produced hundreds of woodblock print designs in response to a general curiosity about the newly arrived visitors.
Yoshitora was a leading designer of these prints and he also produced a number of landscapes derived from Western engraving. In the Meiji period that began in 1868 he also worked for newly established newspapers.
