Japan: A Geisha blackening her teeth. From the series '24 Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi'. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892), 1880

Ohaguro (お歯黒) is a custom of dyeing one's teeth black. It was most popular in Japan until the Meiji era. Tooth painting was also known and practised in the southeastern parts of China and Southeast Asia. Dyeing was mainly done by married women, though occasionally men did it as well. It was also beneficial, as it prevented tooth decay, in a similar fashion to modern dental sealants.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (30 April 1839 – 9 June 1892) (Japanese: 月岡 芳年; also named Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇 芳年) was a Japanese artist and Ukiyo-e woodblock print master.

He is widely recognized as the last great master of Ukiyo-e, a type of Japanese woodblock printing. He is additionally regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.

By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

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