曲輪来伊達大寄 · Ichimura-za · Ōban Triptych · Tenpō 7 (1836)

Condition Report

Impression & Colours

Very good. A strong impression with crisp keyblock lines, down to the fine hatching of the rat's fur and the slats of the bamboo blinds. Colours are well preserved across all three sheets: the teal of the blind borders and the centre costume, the purple and blue of the costumes, the orange-red accents and the layered greys of the rat all keep their strength.

Paper

Very good for a print of 1836. Some toning and minor soiling consistent with age. Tiny binding holes in the margin, and minor reinforcement of the paper on the margin of one sheet. The images are unaffected and the triptych presents very well.

⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully to judge the toning, soiling and margin repair for yourself.

Three Actors and a Giant Rat

Kuniyoshi sets his three actors against an enormous grey rat. Its body, claws and glinting eyes run behind the figures across all three sheets, so that the animal becomes the backdrop of the whole design. Bamboo blinds hang along the top edge, and a small rat sits at the feet of each actor. The effect is theatrical in the most literal sense: the supernatural presence fills the stage, and the actors hold their poses in front of it.

The rat belongs to the world of the Date family dispute (Date sōdō), the source of many kabuki plays. In this tradition the villain Nikki uses rat sorcery: in the best-known version, Meiboku Sendai Hagi, he steals back the conspirators' secret scroll in the form of a rat and then rises through the stage trap in his own shape. Here Kikugorō III plays Nikki, "actually" (jitsu wa) the hidden figure Tenjiku Kaja Masanori. The jitsu wa device, in which a character is revealed to be someone else, was one of the favourite turns of Edo kabuki, and Kuniyoshi signals it by placing the sorcerer's familiar directly behind his scowling figure.

The Ichimura-za Production of Spring 1836

Kuruwa Kuruwa Date no Ōyose opened at the Ichimura-za in the 2nd month of 1836. The title plays on the pleasure quarter (kuruwa) and the Date clan, the two worlds the production combined. It was a showcase for Onoe Kikugorō III, who took several roles. Besides Nikki, he appeared as the courtesan Takao and as the ghost of Suke of Hanyū village, a ghost scene billed on the prints as a newly devised sensation. Kuniyoshi and Kunisada both designed prints for the production.

The present triptych records the eighth act, according to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which holds an impression of this design in the William Sturgis Bigelow Collection.

The Actors

Onoe Kikugorō III (left) was the great specialist in ghost roles and stage tricks of his age. He created the role of the ghost Oiwa in Tsuruya Nanboku's Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan in 1825, and a play built around sorcery and apparitions was natural ground for him. Kuniyoshi gives him the fierce blue kumadori make-up and the glaring pose of the villain.

Mimasu Gennosuke I (centre), seated in a broad mie with two swords, later took the name Mimasu Daigorō IV. Ichimura Uzaemon XII (right) was not only an actor but head of the Ichimura family that ran the theatre; it was under him that the theatre was moved to Saruwaka-chō in Asakusa in 1842, as part of the Tenpō reforms. The right sheet shows him in a blue polka-dot costume, gripping his sword beside a figure in black.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi — Before the Reforms

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861) trained under Utagawa Toyokuni I and made his name with the warrior prints of the Suikoden heroes from 1827. He is best known today for musha-e, but in the 1830s he also designed actor prints for the Edo stage, working in the shadow of his fellow pupil Kunisada, the leading actor-print designer of the day.

This triptych shows how Kuniyoshi brought his own strengths to the genre. Where an actor print would usually set the figures against a simple ground, he builds the design around a single monumental creature, the same instinct for scale and drama that drives his warrior and monster prints. It is an early example of a Kuniyoshi theatre triptych, made six years before the Tenpō reforms of 1842 restricted the publication of actor prints.

Collector's Note

Prints for this 1836 production appear only rarely on the market, and complete triptychs even less often. Kuniyoshi's design is recorded in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Bigelow Collection, 11.38526a-c). The present set is complete with all three sheets, in a strong impression with well-preserved colour, and combines two of Kuniyoshi's great subjects: the kabuki stage and the supernatural.