Kotondo Torii (1900 - 1976)

Kotondo was primarily a painter. In 1915 he was adopted into the Torii family, and went on to make Kabuki posters, billboards and scroll paintings. Around 1930 he made the total of 21 bijin-ga. They were carved by Maeda (who worked for the best artists of his time, Paul Jacoulet a.o.), and published by Sakai & Kawaguchi in the late 20s and by Ikeda in the 1930s. Certainly a distinguished group of prints, popular with collectors from the time they were first produced. After 1941 he succeeded his father as head of the Torii school and from then on went by the name of Torii Kiyotada V. In the 1980s his pre-war prints were republished by Ishukankokai in Tokyo.