Moon of Pure Snow

The Piece
Crafted in heavyweight bone-white cotton, the Moon of Pure Snow T-shirt carries a sumi-style PHAVOS™ mark on the front and Yoshitoshi’s complete composition across the back.

The Artwork
The back print reproduces Moon of Pure Snow at Asano River: Chikako, the Filial Daughter (1885) by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, from his series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. The scene shows Chikako suspended above the river on a snowy night, hands joined as the moon rises behind her.

The Story
The print draws on the story of Chikako, daughter of the merchant Zeniya Gohei. Her death in the Asano River became associated with an act of filial devotion following her father’s imprisonment. Yoshitoshi chooses the moment before the fall, holding the narrative in a single suspended image.

The Artist
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) was one of the leading ukiyo-e artists of the late nineteenth century. Working through the transition from the Edo period into Meiji Japan, he brought an unusually dramatic sense of narrative and emotion to the woodblock print.

The PHAVOS™ Interpretation
The artwork is reproduced intact. Ukiyo-e was made to circulate as commercial visual culture for an urban public, and that history sits close to the idea behind PHAVOS™ and Killin’ Luxury™. The intervention is its context: the image moves from paper to clothing and returns to circulation through the people wearing it.

Discover the artwork →