After having left the Utagawa School, he had a tough time to make a living as an ukiyo-e artist. He was even forced to earn his living by repairing and selling floor-mats. Kuniyoshi achieved his commercial and artistic breakthrough in 1827 with the first 6 designs of the series The 108 heroes of the Suikoden. The series was about 108 rebels and honorary bandits, based on an old Chinese novel from the 14th century. The story was very popular in Japan. The artist continued with this pattern of success and concentrated on print subjects of warriors and heroes. He was even nicknamed Warrior print Kuniyoshi.

Since the early 1840s, Kuniyoshi prints show some influence of Western style painting and printmaking. The artist possessed a collection of Western engraving prints. He admired them as much as the European Impressionist artists would admire Japanese woodblock prints later. Western influence can be found in Kuniyoshi prints in several ways: the use of the Western perspective, the way he designed clouds and the way he tried to show the effects of light and shadow.

In the 1840s and 1850s, Japan was in a strict and oppressive rule that controlled even the most trivial things of everyday's life. Kuniyoshi Utagawa was among the artists who quietly protested with satire and irony in his prints. In 1843 the artist got into some serious trouble with the authorities and even came under investigation. In the end he got away with a fine and a reprimand, and the woodblocks for a satirical triptych were destroyed. Kuniyoshi was a rather down to earth, straight-forward man. Although very talented, he had to fight hard to make his way from a son of a silk-dyer to the top. But even after he "had made it", he remained a man with his feet on the ground. He always followed his convictions. When he did not like a publisher, he rejected commissions - no matter how lucrative they were.