Utagawa Hirosada (歌川広貞: 1810-1864) (artist early 1810s - early 1860s)
Ōkawa Hashizō I as Shirai Gonpachi from the suicide scene in the play Ume tabiji gojusan eki or '53 Stages of the Plum Tree Journey' 梅旅路五十三驛
1848
10 in x 14.75 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese color woodblock print
Signed: Hirosada
Artist's seal: Konishi Gochō
Publisher: Iidakichi (飯田吉)
(Marks U087 - seal #25-491)
British Museum
Rijksmuseum
Philadelphia Museum of Art - identified as being in the play Sangoku Ichi Tsui no Kuromono (A Pair of Blackguards: The Best in the World)
Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts
Hankyu Culture Foundation - Toyokuni III study for the same scene
Hankyu Culture Foundation - 1869 Yoshitaki print of the same scene The British Museum curatorial files note:
Ōkawa Hashizō (Onoe Kikugoro III) as Shirai Gonpachi, standing in ferry boat against black sky with wounds to his waist, sword through his neck, with bloodstains on his arm and leg; the suicide scene from the play 'Ume tabiji gojusan eki' (53 Stages of the Plum-tree Journey), 4/1848.****
Ōkawa Hashizō I (aka Onoe Kikugorō III) appeared in Kamigata for only four brief seasons starting in 1820 and climaxing with this, his final appearance in 1848 as the villainous robber, Shirai Gompachi. Gompachi was escaping the Edo police in a row boat, when he was ambushed on the Sumida River. Realizing that 'the game was up', he committed a gruesomely violent suicide.
Onoe Kikugoro appeared in this gory role in a dance interlude Sangokuichi tsui no kuromono at the Kado za, Osaka, in the fifth month of 1848, the year before his own death.
The poem above printed in silver, translated by Eiko Kondo, in Kennedy Catalogue, 1984, #21:
The blossoms of the wild cherry are their own poets when they fall.
(A reference to Gompachi's suicide.)
A variant translation from a British Museum catalog compiled by Laurence Binyon: "How splendid to see the petals of the mountain cherry scatter." A third variant can be read below in the information provided by OsakaPrints.com.
****
Illustrated in:
1) color in The Male Journey in Japanese Prints by Roger Keyes, University of California Press, 1989, fig. 225, p. 162. The publisher is Kinkadō.
2) in the Rijksmuseum catalogue, The Age of Yoshitoshi, #213.
3) Hirosada catalogue, Long Beach, USA, #9 (belonging to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.)
****
Osakaprints.com gave one of the best summaries of this print to be found anywhere.
"The best known plays about Gonpachi are grouped together as Gonpachi Komurasaki mono (works about Gonpachi and Komurasaki: 権八小紫物). Their genesis lies in actual events involving unrelated historical figures. The samurai Shirai Gonpachi (白井権八) from Tottori province, guilty of murder and robbery, was executed in 1679. The second figure was the legendary otokodate (lit., standing man, i.e., chivalrous commoner: 男伊達 or 男作) Banzuin Chôbei (幡随長兵衛), ca. 1622-1657, said to have been killed by Mizuno Jûrozaemon, a leader of hatamoto-yakko (bannermen footsoldiers: 旗本奴).
One theatrical adaptation featuring Gonpachi bestows notoriety upon him at age 16 when he was already famous for his good looks, bravery, and swordsmanship. He kills a fellow samurai and flees to Edo, where at an inn he is warned by a 15-year-old beauty named Komurasaki (小紫) that the owner is a gang leader plotting to murder him for his sword. Gonpachi swiftly kills all ten of the gang. Afterwards he visits the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter and finds Komurasaki at the Miuraya brothel, now a prostitute selling herself to earn money for her destitute parents. Without the funds to ransom her, Gonpachi turns to a life of debauchery, supporting himself by robbery and murder. When he is finally captured and executed, the devoted Komurasaki takes her life at his grave. To honor their memory, sympathetic citizens build a tumulus called hiyokuzuka (lovers' tomb) and temple priests carve a picture of the Hiyoku no tori (比翼鳥), a mythical love-bird — both male and female, each with one eye and one wing — that when flying join as one sex, symbolizing connubial love and fidelity.
There is a different ending in the play depicted here, Ume tabiji gojusan eki (Fifty-three stages of the plum tree journey: 梅旅路五十三驛), wherein Gonapchi takes his own life rather than face capture and a public execution.
The Edo-based actor Onoe Kikugorô III (1784-1849) was, along with Nakamura Utaemon III, one of the earliest recorded kaneru yakusha ("all-around actor": 兼ねる役者), actors who could perform, with notable skill, virtually any type of role. In 1825 the playwright Tsuruya Nanboku IV wrote for Kikugorô the celebrated role of Ôiwa in Tôkaidô Yotsuya kaidan (Tôkaidô ghost story at Yotsuya: 東海道四谷怪談), the most popular of all kabuki ghost plays. Often championed by his fans as a rival of the Edo superstar Ichikawa Danjûrô VII, Kikugorô, after countless triumphs on the Edo and Osaka stages, retired in 1847, whereupon he opened a shop selling rice cakes (mochi: 餅). He returned to the theater as Ôgawa Hachizô I to perform the role of Gonpachi in 4/1848, as shown in the present print by Hirosada. Four months later, after a tour in Nagoya, he settled in Osaka, but the following year fell ill while traveling the Tôkaidô Road and died at Kakegawa station.
Design
Hirosada's print features the suicide scene from Ume tabiji gojusan eki (Fifty-three stations of the plum tree journey: 梅旅路五十三驛). His composition makes effective use of some of the standard tropes in Kamigata print design. Note, for example, the jet-black sky serving as a backdrop for a dramatic scene, and against which a poem is inscribed in silver-color metallics. The stylized waves lapping up to the boat provide a visual counterpoint to the figure of Gonpachi. Hirosada has achieved something unusual here — a moment in which violence shades into an eerie calm. The poem supports this interpretation in an oblque manner through a conventional metaphor expressing the natural evanescence of life: "Mountain cherry / we love its flowers / because they fall."
This design, a memorable one from Hirosada's oeuvre, is rarely available in the marketplace and only a small number of impressions have been recorded. The British Museum copy (#1906,1220,0.1138) was acquired in 1906; the impression in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (AFGA 1981.1.80) entered that collection in 1981."
Kinkadō Konishi (金花堂小西) (publisher)
Kyōto-Osaka prints (kamigata-e - 上方絵) (genre)
actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
Ōkawa Hashizō I (初代大川橋蔵: 4/1848 to 4/1849) (actor)
Shirai Gonpachi (白井権八) (role)