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Ichikawa Danjūrō as Fuwa Bansaku, son of Fuwa Banzayemon the villain of the piece.
The outer garment is decorated in purple and white on a green ground. The kimono below it is rose-colored.
So many of the actor prints in hosoye form by Sharaku, Shunshō and others were designed to go together in sets of three that one might expect this print and eleven of the twelve hosoye that follow it to make four triptychs. All represent scenes from the same play, and all are on yellow grounds. They do not, however, fall surely into groups and as it is possible that some of Sharaku’s designs for this production have been lost it seems better to state that our arrangement of those that remain is tentative. We group this print and the two that follow as a possible triptych, with this one at the left.
The impression chosen for exhibition from three that are in America bears a hand-written inscription giving the name of the actor. This inscription, with others in the same hand, will be fully discussed under number 100 and we will merely say now that the writer of these inscriptions is believed to have been Shokusanjin, one of the compilers of the original notebook mentioned in our preface, in which contemporary references to Sharaku have been found. Fourteen prints inscribed by that owner came early to Germany and are reproduced, as this one is, in a dealer’s advertisement in the first edition of Kurth’s book.
One of the two other impressions now in American collections is illustrated in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 308, and was rephotographed by Rumpf for his number 69, as well as by Noguchi.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Ledoux Collection.
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