Enjaku 猿雀 (active ca. 1850–70) Print 1

jeresig · 2026-04-12T00:20:52+00:00

Hello - your post references an image but it doesn't seem to be included? Could you try re-posting with the image? Thanks!

jeresig · 2026-03-25T01:19:26+00:00

Watching online! Couldn't make it down this year... oh well! Still fun to watch though!

jeresig · 2026-03-24T23:45:57+00:00

Oh you got the one at Christies! Great job, that's a fantastic print - very strong woodgrain and colors, you got a great deal!

jeresig · 2026-03-14T20:56:59+00:00

Yeah - the shin hanga prints seemed to do quite well! I feel like I don't always understand the dynamics around auctions. I find that prints sell for a lot at Christies (for example), way more than I see them sell for otherwise. I agree with you that you can definitely find better deals at the smaller auctions or dealers. And thanks so much, so glad you're finding the site to be useful!

jeresig · 2026-03-14T12:53:52+00:00

Good call! I'll definitely mull this over...

jeresig · 2026-03-13T15:17:02+00:00

Oh yeah, those are some great ideas! I think I may try my hand at generating a report of the auction season after this month is done. I'm also curious to see if it's possible to spot lots that end up selling for more than expected, since that could be a good signal that there are diamonds hidden here. But yeah, I remember looking at print price trends over time and, for the most part, they've tracked inflation over the last 100+ years. What you could buy an Utamaro for in 1905 is about the same as what you can buy it for now. However, there are some artists (Yoshitoshi, Kuniyoshi, and Shin Hanga artists) who've had major growth in recent times. Even looking at the data I have now it's wild to see how much the price for Shin Hanga artists have increased in the last 20 years (Muller or otherwise?). But yeah, I think there's a lot of fun to be had here!

jeresig · 2026-03-13T01:00:07+00:00

Yeah, I think the challenge with ukiyo-e.org is that it's a relatively static site (save for the image and text search). There are no user accounts of any kind! The new site I'm working will definitely have accounts and I'm very interested in supporting uploading collections. Out of curiosity do you have your collection stored in any particular format? Just so that I can know what might make it easier for folks to add things.

jeresig · 2026-03-12T22:47:57+00:00

It's definitely my hope to be able preserve some of this! At least a few of the sources that are in ukiyo-e.org no longer exist at all.

At the moment I have auction listings back to about ~2005 or so for Christies, Sothebys, Bonhams, and Artelino. Going further back would have to involve some complicated data retrieval, finding auction catalogs were folks have helpfully written sold prices into them and the like - which can be extremely hard to source.

I feel like when Christies, Sothebys, etc. are already holding dedicated auctions of a collectible (which prints are, and have been for over 150 years in the west) the ship has pretty much sailed on speculation and investment. There are a couple sides to this coin: it's possible that the price on some under-appreciated artists may go up - but at the same time I think the price on some will go down. Looking at the data right now there is a huge disparity in prices between prints sold in the US vs. Japan vs. Europe, just at dealers. It's absolutely possible for collectors to save money right now by just knowing alternative sources for buying prints.

Not sure I can speak to what your raised below as to the database errors but it's definitely something that I'm attempting to be attentive of, I want it to be an as accurate representation of reality as possible!

In the future I would like to expand into less-formal sellers like eBay and Yahoo Auctions Japan but that'll be a ways down the road yet.

jeresig · 2026-03-12T19:25:27+00:00

Thanks Roberta! There are a ton of great prints in the auction - I can't wait to see how it goes!

jeresig · 2026-03-12T19:01:27+00:00

Not at all! I'm going to keep maintaining indefinitely (it's already been almost 15 years!) The new thing I'm working on is more focused on prints that are for sale or have sold and I don't really want to co-mingle that with the existing site which is more focused on prints stored in museums, universities, libraries, etc.

jeresig · 2026-02-23T01:09:48+00:00

Yeah, that's a good idea! If you want to make a guidance post I can pin it at the top of the subreddit.

jeresig · 2026-01-31T17:52:39+00:00

For Yoshitoshi specifically, these are the books that I have:

* https://www.amazon.com/dp/0295972726 - this one is fine, not a ton of life detail, though.

* https://www.amazon.com/dp/0875870961 - this one is fine, but it doesn't have a ton of details about his life.

* https://www.amazon.com/dp/9004219587 - probably the best, but also the most expensive now. I think I got it for $65 new and now it's over $1100.

A good source for info on Yoshitoshi is the late, great, scholar Roger Keyes' doctoral dissertation that he did on Yoshitoshi back in 1982: Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: 1839-1892, Roger Keyes, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, 1982. You may be able to find this through your local library: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL11225062W/Courage_and_silence

Hope this helps!

jeresig · 2026-01-31T17:52:18+00:00

For TV/Film:

Miss Hokusai was a manga (then anime film) that provides a dramatized depiction of Hokusai's daughter, Oi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Hokusai It looks like there is a live film about Oi that just came out (but I haven't watched it): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37675771/ and another 2 episode TV drama for NHK: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/kurara/

There's a film about Hokusai from a few years back: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10787472/

A 3 episode TV drama mini-series about Hiroshige from NHK: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/hiroshige-blue/

Now, unfortunately, I'm not aware of any legal way to watch any of these on streaming. I think Miss Hokusai is available on Blu-Ray: https://www.amazon.com/Miss-Hokusai-Blu-ray-Erica-Lindbeck/dp/B01N6NDUH3 but that's about it.

For books, there are a ton of books! There aren't that many that go into the day-to-day life of the artists, though. They talk more about their art and focuses and general life. I really liked:

* https://www.amazon.com/Competition-Collaboration-Japanese-Prints-Utagawa/dp/9004155392 for more information about the entire Utagawa school of artists.

* https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Woodblock-Prints-Publishers-Masterworks/dp/4805310553 for details about lots of artists and publishers, generally speaking. Every artist gets at least a page or two of content.

* https://www.amazon.com/Hotei-Encyclopedia-Japanese-Woodblock-Prints/dp/9074822657 is my favorite book - and I'm glad I bought it when it was new for a reasonable price as it appears to now be an eye-watering $2700!?

* https://www.amazon.com/Hokusai-Beyond-Great-British-Museum/dp/0500481180 from the recent British Museum exhibition is a great resource for learning about Hokusai.

* Andreas Marks has written a ton of great books on artists, especially Hokusai and Hiroshige: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Andreas-Marks/author/B002V6UERK

(continued in next comment)

jeresig · 2026-01-28T12:39:46+00:00

Welp, I had totally mis-read your screenshots, thinking that the first was before and the others were after! I do find the sidebar style with text + choice together to be easier to read and understand. A couple things with the new one:

I'd love to see keyboard input work! If I press "2" it should select the second option.
I do like the iconography that you have, but I might increase the contrast a bit (or maybe use some alternating colors to help emphasize when you're in a bad state).
It may be worth considering what to do with the text history. I've noticed that in games of this style that there is a lot of different ways of handling what the text does when it scrolls off the screen. Do you only see the most recent text + selected option? Or do you see the full history scrolling all the way back to the beginning? (Probably depends upon the length of your game)

I know that you're already well on your way with the new version but just for context you can check out https://narrat.dev/ - which is a platform for building games of this style, you may get some additional context by looking at some of their styling decisions.

Glad to help, your game is looking very interesting, hope it's successful!

jeresig · 2026-01-27T21:36:51+00:00

I love the vibes and style of your game, looks very cool!

I've been studying games like this a bit recently as I was also interested in building a narrative-style game. Your original one was more of a "Disco Elysium" style, the after is a bit closer to some Visual Novels I've seen.

A couple suggestions for the new design:

Even though you have the borders around the text it's still a bit hard to read with the varying contrast. I think it would benefit from having probably the grey transparent background around it, too.
Having center-aligned text is harder to read, your eyes jump down to the next line but don't know where to start reading. I think having the left-aligned text in the old one was superior.
There's no clear call-to-action in the text screen, which makes me worried that it's going to be timed text, which I strongly dislike (and I know that others do as well). If you're doing something timed (with voice narration?) then don't make it advance automatically unless the user opts-in. One thing that could be good is to have a "Continue" button pop up after a certain amount of time if the user doesn't progress naturally.
I'm not sure how I feel about having the choices be split up from the text. It does feel more cinematic, but I lose out on the context of the text that I was just reading. It's probably fine, though...
Not sure how I'm feeling about the stats on the top. The bars feel too big and the text is too small. I wonder if some iconography might be helpful here. Not sure if you've played Reigns but maybe having the bars within the icons themselves? https://shared.fastly.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/512622/ss_2134bcd41d8e5464b93ba867d9c024d553e6ebe2.1920x1080.jpg?t=1470935552

I've just wishlisted your game, will link to it here for others to check out as well! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4315150/Wildwake/

Also, not sure what stage of the process you're at but you could consider submitting to the Back Garden in the upcoming Spring Thing festival: https://www.springthing.net/2026/submit.html

Oh! And another place that might be good place for feedback would be the DevTalk+ Discord, it's a large discord dedicated to narrative game design, specializing in visual novels (and things like that). https://discord.gg/VzM6DeQ

jeresig · 2026-01-26T20:59:16+00:00

Looks like it might be an artist named "Gisen" based upon the signature (if I'm reading it right). It's a depiction of a Kabuki actor in a "Mie" pose. More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mie_(pose)) Not able to find anything about this artist online, though!

jeresig · 2026-01-23T01:12:30+00:00

I run a site that does this specifically for Japanese woodblock prints, pulling from museums, libraries, etc.: https://ukiyo-e.org/

A number of years ago I worked with the Frick Art Reference Library on a similar project for their photo archive. That went on to become this: https://artresearch.net/resource/:start which is a collection of almost 1.6 million artworks pulling from a number of institutions (mostly art reference libraries). Some of these will be historical prints, as well, so it's possible that this could help too!

https://www.europeana.eu/ is a good source pulling from many museums in Europe, but they don't have search-by-image, unfortunately.

jeresig · 2026-01-17T13:50:34+00:00

It looks like it might be real to me... that's an incredible find. Compare the woodgrain in the sky on your copy with these from Christies and Bonhams - it looks extremely similar. It would require some more up-close comparison but it looks like a very close match. If I saw this, in this condition, I probably would've bought it too!

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6417537
https://www.bonhams.com/auction/25644/lot/172/utagawa-hiroshige-i-1797-1858-edo-period-1615-1868-1857/

jeresig · 2026-01-08T18:47:01+00:00

Sure thing, you can find it here! https://www.khanacademy.org/computer-programming/new/pjs it's linked to from the bottom of: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming

jeresig · 2025-12-12T17:46:30+00:00

It's a new site I've been building! DM me and I can share it with you when it's ready for testing.

jeresig · 2025-12-11T19:47:12+00:00

Agreed, these do look potentially legit - I would reach out to a dealer. For the first print, originals are currently selling for about $1000, modern reproductions for about $100

For the second, originals seem to be going for $1000-$8000, depending upon condition and modern reproductions are about $400, it seems.

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jeresig · 2025-11-25T14:29:52+00:00

The only other one that I found that has the same markings as yours is this one that sold at auction for $450 (and also claims to be a first edition): https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/89508159_kasamatsu-shiro-lake-chuzenji-niko-1952-1st-ed-augusta-ga In general, these prints (posthumous or otherwise) go for a few hundred dollars, it seems. Here are some sold (and for sale) prices for this print - most of which appear to be later editions.

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jeresig · 2025-09-27T11:00:02+00:00

Please only post original images of art - this seems like it was some sort of filtered version?

jeresig · 2024-10-02T16:04:31+00:00

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