122
Iwai Kumesaburō as the geisha Kumekichi.
He is dressed in an outer kimono which probably once was purple and now is pale chocolate brown. The obi is mainly pale rose with circles in green and black. The under kimono is in faded rose. The foreground probably was yellow; the once blue bands in the background have faded to dull straw color with a white wave design which has become almost invisible.
We believe that in the original set of five sheets the one now unknown came at the left of this one, and we have reason to assume that the print we place here as next in order survives only in the much trimmed impression exhibited, which was rephotographed by Rumpf for his number 119 from a cut in the catalogue of the Crewdson Sale (London 1919).
Hosoye. The background is the wall of a room decorated with three horizontal bands the upper and lower of which once were blue with water motives in white, while the central band shows flowering cherry branches against an untinted ground. Signed: Sharaku.
Museum of Fine Arts (Bigelow Collection).
123
Sawamura Sōjūrō III as Satsuma no Gengobei, the hero of the piece.
The outer garment is in gray and white. The under one is solid green.
In the composition of the original pentaptych Gengobei presumably occupied the central position with two women on either side of him. The impression we exhibit is the only one in America and being slightly trimmed on the left, as the preceding number was on the right, the con-
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