Natori Shunsen (名取春仙) (artist 1886 – 1960)

Onoe Taminosuke in the role of Otsuma [多見之助のお妻] from the play Sakuratsuba Urami Samezaya [桜鍔恨鮫鞘] from the series Shin Nigao-e (New Actor Portraits)

Print

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Date:11/1915
Dimensions:5 in x 8.25 in (Overall dimensions) Medium:Japanese woodblock print
Inscription:Signed: Shunsen (春仙)
Artist's floral seal in red
Links The British Museum (via Ritsumeikan University)
British Museum - vol. 5 of these prints - click through to see this one Description:The curatorial files at the British Museum contain a lot of information about the origin of this print: what grouping it came from, the nature of the title of this set and the reason for it publication.

"Shibai: Shin nigao-e 芝居: 新似顔絵 (The Theatre: New Portraits of Actors) (The Theatre: New Portraits of Actors)"

"Yakusha-e 新似顔 (Portraits of Actors (Furigana reading of characters)) (Portraits of Actors (Furigana reading of characters))"

"Shin nigao 新似顔 (New Portraits of Actors (Chinese-style reading of characters)) (New Portraits of Actors (Chinese-style reading of characters))"

"Description
Illustrated book. Vol. 5 of five volumes published serially in various formats. Depictions of actors and court officials, associated with the coronation of the Emperor Taisho. Woodblock-printed."

In the curator's comments they added: "Individual volumes published under the title with Chinese characters reading 'Shin nigao' and furigana reading 'Yakusha-e'. Kept together in a box affixed with a label inscribed with the title 'Shibai shin nigao-e'. Museum holds volumes published in June, July, August, October and November 1915."

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The text below this print identifies the actor, the role and the artist.

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"Many of kabuki's domestic dramas were adaptations of actual events. In 1702 at the Yotsubashi in Osaka, a dealer in second-hand goods named Hachirôbei murdered Otsuma, a prostitute in the Tanbaya teahouse. This spawned — as was the custom for sordid or shocking tales that caught the fancy of the public — songs and dramas about the ill-fated couple. Edo and Osaka each produced its preferred versions of the story, with occasional conflations of similar real events (unbelievably, one in Edo involved a prostitute named Ginneko Otsuma slain by vendor of dry goods named Hachirôbei!). Many of the Otsuma Hachirôbei mono portrayed Hachirôbei as especially despicable and included scenes in which Otsuma engages in aisozukashi ("becoming sick of something"), a kabuki convention in which a woman verbally abuses a man without looking directly at his face as she rejects his advances."

This information was taken directly from osakaprints.com.

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This is #191 in the Natori Shunsen (名取春仙) exhibition catalogue from Kushigata in 1991.

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The publisher was Nigaodō (似顔洞) and the carver was Bonkotsu Igami (凡骨伊上: 1875-1933).
Related entities actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
modern prints (shin hanga - 新版画) (genre)
Onoe Taminosuke (尾上多見之助: 1874 to January, 1918) (actor)

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