About the artist
Shodo Yukawa was an Osaka-based nihonga painter and print designer active during the Meiji and Showa periods. Born in Wakayama, Shodo studied first under Sadahiro Mitani in Osaka, before moving to Kyoto to study under Shonen Suzuki. He later returned to Osaka. Though he worked primarily as a painter, Shodo Yukawa also produced popular bijin-ga, or “pictures of beautiful women” in the woodblock print format. His series Kinko Fuzoku Hyaku Bijin (1901-1903) was popular, portraying beauties and customs of past and present. While the title speaks to one hundred beauties, the complete series included more than one hundred designs. There is some dispute about the year of his death, but scholars agree that he was alive in 1915.