The two actors shown separately in this print and the next may be seen together in number 54.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Museum of Fine Arts (Bigelow Collection).
53
Arashi Ryūzō as Ukiyo Matahei, a minor malefactor in the service of Banzayemon, the villain of the play.
The two Matahei are shown together in number 54.
Here Ryūzō is in black with a white pattern and his skirt is deep rose, patterned in yellow-green. The collar is white with a design of yellow-green bamboo. The under collar is black. Though the coloring differs slightly, the costume is the same as that which he is wearing in the following number.
We place the subject as the right-hand sheet of a triptych.
The print has been very badly trimmed and the missing portions have been painted in by copying the reproduction of a more nearly intact impression from the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 305. Rumpf in his number 74 rephotographs the Vignier-Inada impression, and only these two are known to survive.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
156
