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Iwai Hanshirō IV as Chichinohito (Wet-nurse) Shigenoi, the wife of Date no Yosaku who is represented as Monnosuke portrayed him, in the preceding number.
This impression bears a hand-written inscription giving the name of the actor.
The outer robe is in faded violet with a lining of rose. Below that the actor wears a white kimono patterned in rose. The collars of the three under garments now are mainly white but perhaps once were edged with color. The obi is black, the amulet bag is in red-orange and yellow. The covering of the tonsure is the faded violet of the outer robe.
In some carelessly printed impressions the black of the hair does not show through the translucent comb as it does in the one exhibited and as it should do. It does not show in the reproduction in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 269, or in the rephotographing of this as Rumpf number 12, and by Noguchi. It does show in the impression used by Kurth and Nakata and in the one from the Camondo Collection in the Louvre which is reproduced by Benesch. The inscribed print here exhibited was reproduced in 1909 in Morrison’s Catalogue of the London Fine Art Society Exhibition of that year, and was chosen by us from six in America.
Ōban. Dark mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Museum of Fine Arts (Spaulding Collection).
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