Looks Fierce but Is Really Nice

Against a light blue background, a man with a topknot and a large face is drawn with a slightly angry look in his eyes. Looking closely, the outline of the face, the nose, mouth, and topknot are made by gathering together the bodies of naked people. The kimono has large brown and white stripes, and the fingers of the hand held out in front also look like human bodies. At the upper left is a hiragana text, and at the upper right a title cartouche. The title means "He looks fierce, but he is really a nice person."

According to the museum's commentary, this is a kind of caricature called "yose-e," a work that combines humans in various poses to make the eyes, nose, and mouth, the eyebrows, the topknot, and probably even the body beneath the kimono.

The Western painter Arcimboldo also tried to express the human body in the same way with plants and fruit, but the relationship between the two is uncertain. A connection to the Kamakura-period warrior Asahina Yoshihide is also rumored because of the kimono pattern. Kuniyoshi was an artist who captured the public with witty comic pictures.