Toyokuni was born as the son of a puppet maker.
He learned printmaking as a student of Toyoharu. At the beginning of his career he concentrated on bijin-ga - images of beautiful women. His early works were influenced by Kiyonaga and Shigemasa.

Toyokuni's success and fame came when he started making yakusha-e or actor portraits and actor scenes. At that time, prints related to Kabuki were a hot business and demand came from the theaters - for advertising material - and from the fans - in form of actor portraits. The production of actor portraits was like today's publication of celebrity posters.

In this way, Toyokuni led the yakusha-e business and created the foundation of Utagawa School’s economic prosperity. He also put his effort into yakusha-e-hon (books of actor portraits).
Besides portraits of actors, he showed his outstanding talent in various kinds of portraits. In his advanced age, he often depicted beauties with round backs and short necks. Although typifying motifs caused the lack of zest in his artworks, it was probably most suitable for artists to mass produce their art pieces.

Utagawa Toyokuni II (Ichiryusai Toyoshige, Kousotei)initially used an artist name, Ichiryusai Toyoshige.

He was a pulil and son-in-law of Toyokuni I.
He became head of the Utagawa School after Toyokuni I died and named himself as Toyokuni II. With regard to portraits of beauties and actors, he kept conservative and solid style exactly like that of Toyokuni I and his artworks lack the spirit of adventure.

Although his artworks are not as uplifting or gorgeous as those of Toyokuni I or Kunisada, many of them have elegiac and elegant beauty. For some reason, he stopped his art activities around Tenpou 6 (1834). He simply signed ?Toyokuni?.

The most distinctive characteristic of his signature is that the Chinese character for Toyo?s top part was written relatively large in its proportion and this is the key element in identifying his signature.

Utagawa Kunisada(Gotoutei or Kouchourou), later called Toyokuni Ⅲ, succeeded Utagawa School which flourished at the time when Toyokuni led the school and he created a lot of art works over a long period of time. He is known as a prolific artist who probably created more than ten thousands. >>>>