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Nakayama Tomisaburō performing a lion-dance, known as a Kirikamuro from the hair arrangement which shows a small bald spot on top of the head.
This is the left-hand sheet of a diptych and we will discuss the two prints together.
The hand-written inscriptions on the prints give the names of the actors, but must have been written at least ten years after publication because that about Yaozō says that later he was called Takasuke, a name which he did not take until 1804 or 1809. With the name Nakayama Tomisaburō is given his nickname “Floppy Tomi.” The collection seals attached to the mount were on a backing of the left-hand sheet when that came to its present owner. The small one reads: Akino. The larger of the two is interesting because it is the collection seal of Ōta Nanpo (1749–1823) who is better known as Shokusanjin and who compiled the first book about the Ukiyo-ye School—Zoku Ukiyo-ye Ruikō, or “Biographical Studies of Ukiyo-ye Artists”—from the manuscript notes of Shikitei Samba which passed into his hands at some time prior to 1815. The compilation of this book is described in our prefatory essay.
The inscriptions on these two prints and on others here catalogued which came early to Germany and are reproduced by Kurth or in the advertisement at the end of the first edition of his Sharaku, are not in the handwriting of Ōta Nanpo (Shokusanjin) which is well known, but are supposed to have been written by Shikitei Samba from whose estate they are said to have come, and who made the notes from which Shokusanjin compiled his book. Before going to Germany the prints with these handwritten inscriptions belonged to Teranigi Kiniiji of Tokyo, and it is he who was responsible for the statement given to Rumpf that most, if not all of them, came from the estate of Shikitei Samba.
The two sheets of the diptych here exhibited were together in the Jaekel Collection in Germany when Kurth reproduced them in the first edition of his “Sharaku.” They were reproduced together again in the 1922 edi-
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