About This Print
In this print, originally created for volume one of the six volume elementary school morals textbook Nishikie Shūshindan ("Brocade Pictures for Moral Education"), Yoshitoshi portrays the Frenchman Pierre returning the money he had been trusted with by his friend. As told in the below cartouche, it seems Pierre's soldier friend had been gone many years, but although Pierre lived and poverty and could have used his friend's money for business opportunities he did not, keeping it safe for his friend.
For more information about shūshindan (moral education) and the prints included in, or associated with, these textbooks see the article Brocade Pictures for Moral Education on this site.
Explanatory Cartouche
The Illustrations and Prints in the Textbooks
Yoshitoshi designed twelve aiban-size color prints along with all thirty-three black and white illustrations for the six volumes of Brocade Prints for Moral Obligations, issued between March 1882 and July 1884. Between one and three of Yositoshi's color prints were inserted, each print being folded in half, in the front of each book.
Many of Yoshitoshi's black and white illustrations later became the basis of single-sheet oban-size color prints designed by a number of his students, as is explained in the notes to the print titled Tame/reject wildness/violence with the sincere spirit of a filial child (IHL Cat. #430) by the artist Kobayashi Toshimitsu (active 1876–1904), a student of Yoshitoshi's.
Most, if not all, of the twelve color prints Yoshitoshi designed for the textbooks were reprinted in 1888 and sold as individual sheets.
A Little About the Publisher
Source: Principle, Practice, and the Politics of Educational Reform in Meiji Japan, Mark Elwood Lincicome, University of Hawaii Press, 1995, p. 81-82.
Tsuji Keiji, an alumnus of the Tokyo Normal School and the author of several textbooks, was intensely committed to the dissemination of developmental education. To that end, in 1882 he established his own publishing house, the Fukyūsha (fukyū means “disseminate”), which published numerous books incorporating the principles of developmental education.
Print Details
| IHL Catalog | #923 |
| Title | The Loyalty of Pierre 「ピエール」の信 |
| Series | Nishikie Shūshindan 錦絵修身談 (Brocade Pictures for Moral Education; also seen translated as Instructive Stories in Color Prints and Color Prints of Stories for Moral Education) The print was created for Volume 1 (巻一) of the textbooks. |
| Artist | Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) |
| Signature |  |
| Seal | 大蘇 Taiso in seal script as shown above |
| Date | 1882 |
| Publisher | 普及舎 辻敬之 Tsuji Keiji of Fukyūsha |
| Carver | |
| Impression | good |
| Colors | excellent |
| Condition | good - center fold from insertion in book |
| Genre | kyōiku nishikie |
| Miscellaneous | Keyes 454-4 |
| Format | horizontal aiban folded in half for insertion into textbook |
| H x W Paper | 8 13/16 x 10 9/16 in. (22.4 x 26.8 cm) |
| H x W Image | 8 3/16 x 10 1/8 in. (20.8 x 25.7 cm) |
| Collections This Print | Philadelphia Museum of Art 1989-47-322 |
| Reference Literature | Yoshitoshi, Masterpieces from the Ed Freis Collection, Chris Uhlenbeck and Amy Reigle Newland, Hotei Publishing, 2011, p. 155, no. 27. |
1/20/19 (created)
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