51
Bandō Mitsugorō II as the farmer Asakusa no Jirōsaku.
The actor is dressed in dark red over green and carries on his back a bundle of yellow straw.
The subject has been reproduced in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 307, and Rumpf number 61 from one impression. Noguchi uses the one we exhibit and reproduce here but shows it as it once was, heavily oxidized. There is one other in America.
We place the print as the left-hand sheet of one of the tentative triptychs we have formed from some of the yellow ground hosoye that record the production of this play.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Ledoux Collection.
52
Ōtani Hiroji III as Tosa no Matahei, a yakko in the service of Nagoya Sanza.
The costume is mainly in sage green patterned in white and dull brick-red. The sword hilt and scabbard are in rose, yellow and gray.
There is no other impression of this print in America and the only one that has been reproduced hitherto appears as Rumpf number 73 and in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 305, where it is placed as the left-hand sheet of a diptych formed of this subject and the following one. In our opinion these two prints are the central and right-hand sheets of a triptych which we have been able to complete by adding the hitherto missing section.
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