Torii Kiyomasu

Who They Were

Torii Kiyomasu (初代 鳥居清倍) was a painter and printmaker of the Edo period (1603–1868), working in the genre of ukiyo-e (浮世絵), the "pictures of the floating world" — woodblock prints and paintings of actors, beauties, and city life that flourished in Japan's early modern cities. He belonged to the Torii school (鳥居派), the workshop that dominated the imagery of the Kabuki theatre.

The Torii artists did not think of themselves primarily as makers of fine prints for collectors. Their core business was Kabuki billboards, theatre advertisements, actor prints, and related promotional material — the visual apparatus that surrounded a production and told the public who was performing and in what role. Kiyomasu worked squarely inside that tradition.

His activity is dated to roughly 1690 to 1720, spanning the Genroku era (元禄, Genroku, the years 1688–1704) and the decades after it. Genroku is conventionally treated as the golden age of Edo-period urban culture, the moment when Kabuki, the pleasure districts, and ukiyo-e all reached a new level of confidence and commercial scale. Kiyomasu's career sits at the centre of that moment.

Life and Career

The central problem of Kiyomasu's biography is that he may not have been a separate person at all. Many scholars hold that he was either the younger brother or the son of Torii Kiyonobu I, one of the founders of the Torii school. Others argue that Kiyomasu was simply an alternate art-name — a gō (号), a studio or pen name of the kind Japanese artists commonly used — for Kiyonobu himself.

The print record gives the puzzle its shape. In the 1710s, prints signed with Kiyomasu's name far outnumber those bearing Kiyonobu's signature. If the two were distinct artists, one reading is that the elder man, as head of the workshop, spent his time on the Kabuki billboards and other work that was the official province of the Torii studio, while the younger handled the prints. If they were the same person, the pattern needs no such explanation: a single artist simply signed different kinds of work with different names.

Stylistically the two are hard to separate, as most Torii work is. Kiyonobu's art grew largely out of Hishikawa Moronobu and is described as very masculine, built on sharp, bold lines. Kiyomasu's work looks much the same at a glance but is softer and more graceful, and has been characterised as showing a "lack of seriousness of intent". That shift is attributed to the influence of Sugimura Jihei, Moronobu's chief competitor.

Why They Matter

Kiyomasu matters first because of the volume of surviving work attached to the name. The 1710s prints signed Kiyomasu are numerous enough to define a phase of Torii output, and any account of actor prints in that decade has to reckon with them.

Second, the name sits at the centre of a genuine attribution problem in ukiyo-e studies. Whether Kiyomasu was a man or a signature determines how the Torii school's internal division of labour is understood — whether a workshop head delegated printmaking to a junior relative, or whether one artist used two names for two kinds of product. The question is not decorative; it changes how the school's output is counted and dated.

Third, the stylistic contrast between the Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu signatures records a real shift in taste. The move from Moronobu's sharp, masculine line toward something softer and more graceful, under the pull of Sugimura Jihei, is visible in the Torii workshop itself. Kiyomasu is the label under which that softer manner survives.

The Name in Japanese

The full name as written is 初代 鳥居清倍.

• Kana reading: とりい きよます
• Romaji: Torii Kiyomasu
• Literary meaning: "Torii Kiyomasu, first generation"

Breaking it down:

初 — read here as sho (part of 初代, shodai). It means "first," "beginning," or "initial." In artist names it marks the founding holder of a name.

代 — read here as dai (again within 初代). It means "generation," "era," or "reign." Together, 初代 (shodai) means "first generation" — the original bearer of the name, as opposed to a successor who would be numbered second, third, and so on. This is why the name is often rendered in English as "Torii Kiyomasu I."

鳥 — read tori. It means "bird."

居 — read i. It means "to be," "to reside," or "seat." Combined, 鳥居 (torii) means "bird perch," and is the name of the distinctive gate-like structure found at the entrance to Shinto shrines. Here it is a hereditary family or school name, not a reference to a building.

清 — read kiyo. It means "pure," "clean," or "clear."

倍 — read masu. It means "double," "multiply," or "twice." In this context it functions purely as a name element, the second half of the given name Kiyomasu.

The pattern is worth noting for anyone reading Edo-period art names: a school name (鳥居, Torii) is followed by a given name (清倍, Kiyomasu), and a generation marker (初代, shodai) may be prefixed to distinguish the first holder from later artists who inherited the same name.

Legacy

The Torii school continued after Kiyomasu, and the practice of passing down names — Kiyonobu, Kiyomasu, and their successors — is itself part of the legacy. A name in this system was an asset belonging to a workshop, not merely a personal label, which is precisely why the boundary between Kiyonobu and Kiyomasu is so difficult to draw.

Kiyomasu's prints from the 1710s remain the principal evidence for the Torii manner in that decade, and the softer, more graceful handling associated with the name stands as a documented alternative to Kiyonobu's sharper line. Whether that alternative belonged to a younger artist or to the elder working under a second name, it entered the record under Kiyomasu and has been discussed under that name ever since.