A Horrible Suicide; A Woman Slays Her Child then Kills Herself 1878

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi created this woodblock print in Japan during the Meiji period. It depicts a disturbing scene: a woman, covered in blood, lying next to her child, who is also covered in blood. A man is pictured flailing in the background. This image comes from a series of prints of gruesome murders and suicides. The artist made these in response to the rise of newspapers. The sensationalist reporting of the time often focused on these kinds of violent events. The artist is therefore acting as a cultural critic. He is commenting on the social changes that were occurring in Japan at the time, as Japan opened up to the west and journalism became more popular. In order to understand this image better, we can look at newspaper archives from the period and examine other forms of media. We can then understand the role of art as contingent on the social context in which it was made.