Yoshitoshi's Strange Tales

Great book

Wanderful book and good quality paper

Fantastic book

perfect! thankx

This book is about two woodblock print series by the 19th century Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi. Both are about ghost tales and other tales of the supernatural. The titles are: '100 tales of Japan and China' from 1865 (26 prints) and 'New forms of 36 strange things' from 1889-1892 (36 prints). They cover the beginning and the end of the artist's career.The book starts with about 20 pages of information on Japanese folk tales and ghost stories, the artist's 'personal encounters with the supernatural' and information on the two series. This part of the book also contains colour illustrations with other artists' work (Hokusai, Kuniyoshi, Kyosai and others), as well as three gorgeous paintings by Yoshitoshi. It then continues with the two series. For each print there is one full page with the colour print in very good quality and size plus one page with information on the print, which includes a translation of the Japanese writing in the print. The explanations are in-depth and truly helpful. I greatly appreciate the fact that there are no black-and-white illustrations of colour paintings or prints. The quality of this book is far above most books on Japanese print series when it comes to both the text and the presentation of the prints. It's a real pleasure to read and look at. I would definitely recommend this title by Hotei, a publishing house from the Netherlands which deserves its good reputation for its high-quality books about Japanese artists.

This books isn't presented very well. Having seen the prints in person I can say these reproductions are terrible. The color is muted and the lines are mushy. The CMYK dot patter is so loose I can easily see it without really looking. Not at all how Yoshitoshi's work actually looks.

This a terrific volume that no Yoshitoshi admirer should do without, very close to the other book available but likely more collectable due to the unique cover differance. Rich colors and fascinating imagery, lots of it...full page, lovely,... and haunting at once, buy it...buy two, one for the trunk and one for the library, this is the real deal!

perfect book in every way... wonderful, detailed reproduction of each wood block with complete descriptions.highly recommend.