Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
Bandō Hikosaburō IV (坂東彦三郎) on right as Ryoshi Tsunazō (猟師綱蔵) and Onoe Tamizō II (尾上多見蔵) as a long necked monster disguised as the koshimoto Otsuru ( 腰元おつる) - from the play Kasane Ōgi Chiyo no Matsuwaka (重扇寿松若)
05/05/1841
19 in x 14.188 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock print
Signed: Gototei Kunisada ga
五渡亭国貞画
Publisher: Yamamotoya Heikichi
(Marks 595 - seal 04-007)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - the whole triptych
Waseda University - center panel, i.e., left panel here
Waseda University -right panel
Victoria and Albert Museum - a related 1857 print by Toyokuni III
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Leiden - a similar Kunisada print probably from the same performance
Waseda University -left panel of the triptych
Royal Museums of Art and History, Belgium (via Cultural Japan) - right-hand panel only The scene being portrayed is The Long-necked Ghost (Rokorokubi Ōatari - ろくろ首大あたり).
There is a similar print to the left-hand panel - probably the middle panel of a triptych - at the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden (RV-1327-86).
****
Lafcadio Hearn in his Romance of the Milky Way and other studies and stories wrote in his 1910 edition on pages 95-99: "The etymological meaning of Rokuro-Kubi can scarcely be indicated by an English rendering. The term rokuro is indifferently used to designate many revolving objects - objects as dissimilar as a pulley, a capstan, a windlass, a turning lathe, and a potter's wheel. Such renderings of Rokuro-Kubi as "Whirling-Neck" and "Rotating-Neck" are unsatisfactory; -for the idea which the term suggests to Japanese fancy is that of a neck which revolves, and lengthens or retracts according to the direction of the revolution.... As for the ghostly meaning of the expression, a Rokuro-Kubi is either (1) a person whose neck lengthens prodigiously during sleep, so that the head can wander about in all directions, seeking what it may devour, or (2) a person who is able to detach his or her head, and to rejoin it to the neck afterwards."is usually depicted as a woman; and old books tell us that a woman might become a Rokuro-Kubi without knowing it, -much as a somnambulist walks about while asleep, without being aware of the fact.... The following verses about the Rokuro-Kubi have been selected from a group of twenty in the Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari: -
Nagaki kami woba
Furi-wakété,
Chi hiro ni nobasu
Rokuro-Kubi kana!
(Oh!... Shaking loose her long hair dis-
shevelled by sleep, the Rokuro-Kubi stretches her neck
to the length of a thousand fathoms!
"Atami naki
Bakémono nari" -to
Rokuro-Kubi,
Mité odorokan
Onoga karada wo
(Will not the Rokuro-Kubi, viewing with
astonishment her body [left behind] cry out,
"Oh, what a heedless goblin have you be-
come!"
Tsuka-no-ma ni
Hari wo tsutawaru
Rokuro-Kubi
Kéta-kéta warau -
Kao no kawasa yo!
(Swiftly gliding along the roof-beam [and
among the props of the roof], the Rokuro-Kubi
laughs with the sound of "kéta-kéta" -oh! the
fearfulness of her face!
Roku shaku no
Byōbu ni nobiru
Rokuro-Kubi
Mité wa, go shaku no
Mi wo chijimi-kéri!
(Beholding the Rokuro-Kubi rise up above the
six-foot screen, any five-foot person would have
been shortened by fear ]or, "the stature of any
person five feet high would have been dimin-
ished."]
Hearn noted that there are too many double-meanings in these poems to list them all. But he did add that 'kéta-kéta' was the sound a ghost would make when laughing or chuckling.
Yamamotoya Heikichi (山本屋平吉) (publisher)
actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
Onoe Tamizō II (二代目尾上多見蔵: 11/1820-1848; 1850-November, 1885) (actor)
Yūrei-zu (幽霊図 - ghosts demons monsters and spirits) (genre)
Bandō Hikosaburō IV (四代目坂東彦三郎: 11/1816 to 2/1856) (actor)