month Ōtani Oniji III became Nakamura Nakazō II and ceased to use the uncorrected mon with which he is shown in one of the original drawings exhibited. This seems to establish the fact that the sketch in question could not have been made after that time, and there is one clear indication of the eleventh month in the same sheet, as the kimono worn there by Segawa Kikunojō is the one in which we have seen him dressed in number 106, a print which represents him in a production of that date. Inferences might be drawn from more than one other sheet which would lead to the same conclusion, but we confine ourselves to pointing out that in the sketch showing Nakayama Tomisaburō the costume is the same as the one he is wearing in print number 94, which also has to do with an eleventh month play.
It is true that in most cases the method of ratiocination we have been following fails to produce any result, and in others it tends to show either that Sharaku had some of his own prints before him when he made the drawings or that he had done at least one of his sketches while a production of the seventh month still was running. (Compare the striped kimono of Iwai Kiyotarō in number 143 and in print number 35 which we have placed in Nihonmatsu Michinoku Sodachi.) But we find that none of the drawings suggest prints which appeared after those of the eleventh month, and therefore we would assign the set to the summer and autumn of 1794. Some have tried to date it several years earlier.
Books such as those for one of which these drawings appear to have been made, generally had twelve double illustrations, and we do not know if Sharaku failed to design the requisite number or if some of his drawings showing certain famous actors not included among the twenty-one he does portray, have been lost. Some of those that we have appear to belong together as compositions in two parts, others do not, and our reproductions of the set are arranged accordingly.
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