The Ukiyo-e Artist Who Drew Cats Wearing Human Clothes
There's a print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi — a late Edo-period ukiyo-e artist — where a group of cats have taken up human occupations. They go about their business with complete seriousness. Kuniyoshi was famously fond of cats, and his affection for them shows up throughout his work — not as background detail, but as subject matter.
That instinct runs through everything he made. Warrior heroes rendered at impossible scale across three-panel triptychs. Giant whales. Animated household objects. Samurai scenes so compositionally aggressive they look like they're about to fall off the paper. Landscapes that borrowed perspective from Western painting and applied it to Japanese scenery.
The Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art is bringing around 400 of his works to Nagoya this spring, running April 24 through June 21. The show's official English title is Utagawa Kuniyoshi: The Spellbinding Ukiyo-e Works of an Eccentric Artist — which the museum means literally.
The exhibition is organized into eight sections — actor prints, warrior prints, landscapes, everyday life, surimono and animal prints, beauty prints, hand-painted works, and comic prints — which is the museum's way of making clear that Kuniyoshi wasn't a one-subject artist. Most people who know his name associate him with heroic samurai imagery, and that's fair. He made his early reputation on a series of Suikoden warrior prints that pushed the subject further than ukiyo-e had taken it before. But the comic prints section alone could sustain a full afternoon. Anthropomorphic animals doing human things, monsters treated as their own punchlines, visual jokes that don't need translating.
One thing worth knowing before you go: the show has a mid-run rotation. Works are split between an early period (April 24 to May 24) and a late period (May 26 to June 21), with some pieces only on view during one half. A few highlights — including Miyamoto Musashi Attacking a Giant Whale and Transformations of Fashionable Cats — are on view throughout. Others, including a major Suikoden triptych, are early-period only. If a specific work is the reason you're going, check the period first.
Friday evenings are worth considering — hours extend to 20:00 instead of the standard 17:00, and the Aichi Arts Center is an easy walk from Sakae, so it pairs naturally with dinner in the area.
The Details
Utagawa Kuniyoshi
The Spellbinding Ukiyo-e Works of an Eccentric Artist
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art
(10F, Aichi Arts Center)
Dates:
April 24 – June 21, 2026
Times:
10:00–17:00
Fridays until 20:00
Last admission:
30 minutes before closing
Closed: Mondays
(Except May 4 and May 7)
Entry:
Adults ¥1,800
University students ¥1,000
High school students ¥800
Junior high school students and under free
Tickets:
Available at the door also online at:
Lawson Ticket (L-code 45063)
7Ticket (113-706)
Ticket Pia (P-code 687-380)
Bonus:
Exhibition tickets also include admission to the museum’s collection exhibition during the show period
Address:
1-13-2 Higashisakura
Higashi-ku, Nagoya
On the web:
Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art — Kuniyoshi exhibition page
Special Kuniyoshi Exhibition Website
Access
By subway: Take the Higashiyama Line to Sakae Station (H10) or the Meijo Line to Sakae Station (M05). From there, it is about a 3-minute walk via the Oasis 21 underground passage or the 2F connecting bridge.
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