Posted by Noel Chiappa (68.231.246.4) on October 15, 2004 at 22:16:20:
Hello, all, I once again have a Yoshitoshi print from a series I can't
identify. You can see the series title cartouche above.
The characters are (from the top, using Nelson numbers) N181, ,
N1171, N628, N4318. The last three I am fairly sure are read "TAIGUN KI",
which mean "great army" "history". Nelson reckons the top character has
meanings of "after", "behind" (KO/GO reading - other sources give GU as
well) and "empress" (kisaki reading - other sources give kimi, mi and
nochi as well). So it's something like "history of the grand army of the
empress", but I can't figure out what.
The date is 1878 (Meiji 11) (the printer/date cartouche on the side is
partially cut off:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/prints/out/UnYoshi2_Date.jpg
but enough is left to read that clearly). However, nothing with any
similar name appears in any list of Yoshitoshi series at about that date.
There's what appears to be a title for the individual print in another
cartouche:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/prints/out/UnYoshi2_Title.jpg
but I have made no attempt to decipher that.
Anyone have any insight here? Thanks in advance!
Noel