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Nakamura Nakazō II as Prince Koretaka disguised. The rôle is the same as that in which Nakazō was shown in the preceding print, and that part of the costume which is fully visible there but seen here only about the neck is identical in the two, the design being composed of the actor’s personal mon. In the cartouche above appear Nakazō’s house and poetry names, Sakaiya and Shūkaku.
This very striking design is printed with the cap and under garment in brick red, and the stripes of the outer kimono in black, yellow and rose. The mon are in yellow and faded violet.
No other of Sharaku’s ten surviving prints in the series of aiban size on yellow grounds can be assigned to this play, but there is some reason for an assumption that Nakazō would have been especially singled out for prominence in the pictorial record of the production because during this performance he succeeded to the name. Before then he had been known as Ōtani Oniji III, and Sharaku’s portraits of him under that name and wearing the mon appropriate to it may be seen as numbers 19, 31 and 32 of this catalogue. Of the two impressions of the print in American collections we have chosen the larger. The other which is somewhat trimmed but perhaps more brilliant, has been reproduced in color in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 257, and by Noguchi. Half-tone reproductions of it occur in Rumpf number 45, Nakata, Ukiyo-ye Taisei Vol. VIII, number 7, and Louis Aubert plate 18. The one exhibited here has not been reproduced before.
Aiban. Yellow ground. Signed: Sharaku.
Museum of Fine Arts (Spaulding Collection).
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