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The Onnagata Actor Segawa Kikunojō II as Yaoya Oshichi Holding a Doll of Her Lover, Kichisaburō
Torii Kiyomitsu Japanese
Not on view
This vertically elongated design, in the format known as a pillar print (hashira-e), presents a stylized full-length portrait of Segawa Kikunojō II (1741–1773), one of the most popular onnagata, or male actors of female roles, of the mid-eighteenth century. Here, he is represented in the popular stock role of Yaoya Oshichi, a greengrocer’s daughter, who has fallen in love with a temple page named Kichisaburō. Oshichi is shown at a tender moment when she takes into her arms a doll of her lover Kichisaburō, whom she met and fell in love with when she took refuge at his family temple during a fire in Tokyo (based on actual events). The inscription above the figure gives the actor’s full name in bold characters, followed by a seventeen-syllable haikai signed Rokō, the actor’s poetry name:
瀬川菊之丞
かぶとにも 胸におもひや ふうじ文 路考
Segawa Kikunojō
The feelings in my heart
extend even to this doll—
and in folded love-letters.
—Rokō
(trans. John T. Carpenter)
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