Ukiyo-e artist of the middle and late Edo period. Son of Shirokoya Ichibei of Honzaimokucho, Edo. He studied under Kiyomitsu I, the third head of the Torii house celebrated for actor prints, and on his master’s death succeeded as the fourth. From about 1767 he made many actor prints in the narrow benizuri format, in the Torii manner, and from about 1775 he turned to pictures of women and manners and to book illustration. The Torii school had made its name in actor prints, but Kiyonaga’s three great sets — Contest of Contemporary Beauties of the Pleasure Quarters, Brocades of the East in Fashion and Twelve Months in the South, made between 1782 and 1784 — won enormous popularity as bijinga full of health and vitality. His stately beauties of eight head-lengths in particular are highly regarded the world over today. His shunga album Sode no Maki, with its superb composition and cropping, is famous as one of the masterpieces of the genre.