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Segawa Kikunojō III as the courtezan Katsuragi, the heroine of the play, and Sawamura Sōjūrō III as Nagoya Sanza, the hero. For separate portraits of these actors in the same rôles see the two following prints.
Kikunojō wears a black robe over an under kimono of rose and violet. Sōjūrō’s outer kimono shows alternate squares of red-brown and greenish gray. His obi is rose and yellow with touches of a color now decomposed but apparently once light blue, which appears also in other parts of the print.
As we noted in our discussion of number 4, Sharaku seems to have taken an especially malicious delight in making the actors of the Segawa line, who were famed for their grace and beauty, just as unattractive and banal as possible, and in maliciousness this portrait is almost the equal of the other. Still a third that is quite as bad as its predecessors will be noted under number 45.
This subject is the least rare of any of Sharaku’s seven surviving designs for full length figures on mica grounds, and there are four good impressions of it in America alone. The one reproduced in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 333, has been reproduced again as Rumpf number 34 and elsewhere. A much trimmed impression reproduced by Kurth is copied by Nakata, and still another is reproduced in color by Noguchi.
Ōban. White mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
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