129
Segawa Kikunojō III in an unidentified rôle.
The orthodox way to catalogue this subject is to say that it represents the third Segawa Kikunojō in the rôle of the shirabyōshi Hisakata pretending to be the New Year Dancer Yamato Manzai in Urū Toshi Meika No Homare. The reasoning back of this attribution is that a contemporary play-bill shows the actor in that part with a somewhat similar hat and with an open fan, and that therefore the print must go with number 115 as the missing portrait of Kikunojō dancing with Nakamura Nakazō II in the Manzai-Saizō interlude. The two prints, however, face in the same direction and do not form a diptych; besides which number 115, at least in the only impression actually known to us, is printed on a ground of pale but definite yellow, whereas the sheet now under consideration is on a completely untinted ground. The hat is correct for the rôle and so is the mantle which, by the way, is not shown in the banzuke, but the two prints certainly do not look as though they were designed to go together.
The other possible identification would connect the subject with Mitsu-Segawa Azuma Ningyō, a nagauta given at the end of Godairiki Koi No Fūjime, various scenes from which we have just been listing. It cannot, however, represent the actor as he appeared there in an Otokomai or male dance, because the costume he used for that is shown to be quite different in an extant play-bill covering the performance. The title of the piece, however, might be translated either as “The Third Segawa’s Eastern Dolls” or as “Segawa’s Three Eastern Dolls,” and if the last mentioned of these two possibilities is correct the actor may have appeared in three costumes—an assumption which we have not been able either to prove or to disprove.
As in number 128, which we connect tentatively with Godairiki Koi No Fūjime, Kikunojō is robed in faded violet over faded rose, but in the print now under discussion he has taken off his outer kimono and has put on a black ceremonial hat, while over his left shoulder is thrown loosely a great mantle now greenish gray in tone, which is decorated with
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