Telescope / Falling on one’s backside / Cleaning the ears / Burning moxa treatment
 
Kobayashi Kiyochika was an artistic master of the Meiji era, which lasted from 1868 to 1912. In his book The Floating World: The Japanese Print, legendary expert on Japanese art Richard Lane called Kiyochika “the last important ukiyo-e master and the first noteworthy print artist of modern Japan.”

Kiyochika‘s work ranged widely, but one of his best-known works was an 1882 book called Thirty Two Faces, which was so popular that he extended the exercise a year later with The Hundred Faces. Each plate had four faces on it, and all of the faces come with Japanese labels explaining what the face is supposed to represent.
 

Kobayashi Kiyochika
 
If you scour the Internet, there are plenty of Kiyochika’s faces around, but accurate English labeling is not always available. In the plate below, accurate captions are available: the faces represent, from top left, “Secret Jealousy of the Wife of a Nobleman,” “Piety of a Filial Daughter,” “A Mistress’s Apparent Jealousy,” and “A Geisha Behind the Scenes.”
 

 
In this regard, the British Museum is a godsend—they have several high-quality reproductions of Kiyochika’s faces and they always supply translated captions. I’ll supply labels where I have them—I think the most common pattern is to start on the upper left and move clockwise, but you can make your own judgments as to what belongs where.
 

Ballad singing / The furtive nibbler / Drinking sake / An unexpected encounter
 

Having a good time / Crocodile tears / Jealousy / The rich man
 
More of these marvelous caricatures after the jump…...