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Nakamura Nakazō II in the rôle of Aramaki Mimishirō pretending to be Saizō in a kaomise shosagoto or “face-showing” dance interlude, entitled Manzai-Saizō, from the names of the traditional characters represented in it.
The Yakusha Ninsō Kagami notes that the other part, that of Manzai, was danced by Segawa Kikunojō and that a special reason for the “face-showing” was Nakazō’s assumption of his new name, to which we have referred in our description of number rog. In any case this kaomise shosa originally was a New Year’s dance and a “face-showing” was customary in productions of the eleventh month which was considered the opening of the theatrical season. There are interesting discussions of kaomise in general and especially of the Manzai-Saizō dance in the glossary of Miss Hirano’s monumental book on Kiyonaga.
Presumably this print was part of a diptych, the lost sheet of which gave a portrait of Kikunojō. See number 129.
Here, against a ground of yellow, the actor is seen dressed in a blue kamishimo and a kimono of violet the designs on which are printed in yellow, rose, blue and green. The under garments are in rose, the tabi are blue, the zōri yellow. The strings on the hat are green and there are touches of rose at the eyes.
This is the only example of the subject in America. A somewhat less trimmed copy is reproduced by Kurth and Nakata and as Rumpf number 82 by rephotographing from the 1904 large Barboutau Catalogue print number 730, and we suspect that their listings of that impression as on a gray ground were guesswork because the Barboutau Catalogue does not mention the ground colors and the only other recorded impression, which is the one we exhibit, is printed on a ground of lovely yellow thus again making a portrait of Nakazō stand out among the prints concerned with the production in which he took that name.
Hosoye. Yellow ground. Signed: Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
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