Torii Kiyomasu I

Torii Kiyomasu was the shop name of a printmaker in Edo, modern Tokyo, who spent his short career plastering the city with bold, eye-catching posters. He and the other Torii artists treated kabuki actors like rock stars: huge, flat colors, thick black outlines, and faces painted in flat planes so crowds could spot them from across the street. Think neon signs that move.

Scholars still argue whether Kiyomasu was Kiyonobu’s younger brother, his son, or the same guy using a different pen name. Either way, he helped invent the Torii style: no soft shadows, no fancy shading, just high-contrast shapes that look like they’re lit from behind, even indoors.

Look for prints where the actor’s robe is a single sheet of vermilion or indigo that bleeds right to the edge of the paper, and where the face is a mask of white with two rice-grain eyes. That’s Kiyomasu’s signature: loud, fast, and impossible to miss.