Ichikawa Danjūrō VII in a Shibaraku Role Confronting the Catfish Priest

Utagawa Kunisada 歌川国貞 Japanese
Shōtei Hokuju 昇亭北寿 Japanese

Not on view

This painted and inscribed folding fan encapsulates the intersection of Kabuki and the literary salon culture surrounding kyōka (witty thirty-one-syllable poems) of early nineteenth-century Edo. A spontaneously brushed composition, it was no doubt created impromptu by a pair of artists and a pair of poets at a shogakai 書画会, or “calligraphy and painting gathering,” which were in great vogue in cities around Japan from the late eighteenth- through the late nineteenth centuries.

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