Yoshitora · Onoe Tamizō II as Yakko Ranpei · Ebisuya...

** A design from the deluxe large-head actor portraits that Kunisada began at the end of his career. Only twelve of the published sheets in the series were designed by Yoshitora, and this is one of them: the Osaka star Onoe Tamizō II as the footman Ranpei, a role famous for its spectacular fight scene. ** Artist: Utagawa Yoshitora (歌川芳虎, active c. 1836–1887) Title: 奴蘭平 尾上多見蔵 — The Footman (Yakko) Ranpei, played by Onoe Tamizō II (二代目尾上多見蔵), with his poetry name Shōchō (松朝) Series: Konjaku Kabuki Meiyū 今昔歌舞伎名優 (Famous Actors Past and Present) Publisher: Ebisuya Shōshichi (恵比寿屋庄七), gō Kinshōdō 錦昇堂 — publisher's seal at lower left Carver: Hori Ryūzō / Chōkō Ryūzan 彫工柳三 — carver's seal beside the title cartouche Date: 1860; the standard edition of this design is recorded with a 3/1860 date seal Technique: Nishiki-e woodblock print on paper, deluxe printing with bokashi and burnishing Format: Ōban tate-e; approx. 37*25 cm Reference: Andreas Marks, Publishers of Japanese Woodblock Prints: A Compendium, 2011, p. 112 (publisher); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, acc. no. 11.16262 (a similar impression) Condition: Fair colours with some fading and a strong impression. The main composition remains well preserved. There is some soiling and toning across the sheet and a light Edo backing. Good condition overall. The sheet is printed on a premium washi that responds well to cleaning if wished. Please check the images! About the print: Onoe Tamizō II was one of the leading actors of the Osaka stage. His career was unusually long: he was active from 1820 until 1885. He was famous for powerful male roles and for spectacular stage effects, and footman and strongman parts suited him well. Ranpei comes from Yamato-gana Ariwara keizu (倭仮名在原系図), a puppet play first staged in Osaka in 1752 and adapted for kabuki in Kyoto the following year. Its fourth act, known as Ranpei monogurui ("Ranpei's Madness"), is the part that has survived on the stage. The courtier Ariwara no Yukihira has been allowed back to the capital from exile at Suma, but he is lovesick for the fisher girl Matsukaze. Ranpei, his footman, brings back a woman who looks exactly like her. When the angry Yukihira draws his sword, Ranpei faints at the sight of the blade and then falls into a frenzy. That fit of madness gives the act its name. Nothing about Ranpei is quite as it seems, and the act ends with one of the longest and most acrobatic fight scenes (tachimawari) in the kabuki repertoire, which is still a showpiece for actors today. About the Setsugekka series: Konjaku Kabuki Meiyū was conceived by Kunisada in his mid-seventies as the culmination of a fifty-year career. It was planned as a survey of the great kabuki actors of the past and of his own day, at a production standard no Edo publisher had attempted for actor prints in living memory. Ebisuya Shōshichi (Kinshōdō) issued the sheets between 1860 and about 1865, and the cost was reportedly underwritten by the Mitani family of copper and iron merchants. The publisher engaged the best block-cutters available, and the carver Ryūzō's seal appears throughout the series. The printing uses lavish burnishing, gloss overprinting, embossing, and pigments chosen without regard to expense. The project was never finished. Of the 150 designs planned, 72 published sheets are known. Twelve of them are by Utagawa Yoshitora, who joined in 1862, probably because Kunisada, then in his late seventies, needed help or was already ill. Kunisada died in January 1865. Yoshitora was himself a pupil of Kuniyoshi, so his contribution brings together the two great Utagawa studios of the period in a single series. The series is generally regarded as the finest group of actor prints Kunisada produced, and its influence leads directly to Toyohara Kunichika's ōkubi-e of the following decades.

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