Saturday, 26 August 2017

78 - Hirokage: Head of a Tiger Eating a Rooster


Ukiyo-e. Hirokage.
Hirokage: Head of a Tiger Eating a Rooster

The somewhat confusing title of this print is Head of a Tiger Eating a Rooster. It is from 1860 and the artist is Utagawa Hirokage, who was active between 1855 and 1865. He was one of Hiroshige's students.

Quite clearly, this is not a tiger, but a leopard. There are other ukiyo-e prints as well, depicting leopards, where they are also called tigers in the title. In Japan of that time, they obviously believed that leopards were female tigers.