Impressive

"It was not that unusual for nihonga artists to work in two different capacities, that is, as illustrators and as serious painters. But rarely do we see an artist who bridged the gap between images of mass culture and serious art, successfully elevating an image of popular culture to the level of academic art."

--Marika Inoue, in "Kiyokata's Asasuzu: The Emergence of the Jogakusei Image", on Kiyotaka's Asasuzu. She notes a couple of other artists in the last footnote of the article, which can be found here.

(Yes, I am doing classwork!)