The Onnagata Actor Nakamura Rikō I as Oniō nyōbō Tsukisayo and Ichikawa Yaozō III as Oniō Shinzaemon
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.In the lineage of Katsukawa artists—who dominated actor print production in the late eighteenth century and created the convention of “likeness portraits” (nigao-e) that transformed the genre—Shunkō was the first student of the founder, Shunshō. While he was signing actor, sumo, and beauty prints with his own name by the early 1770s, Shunkō’s activities as print artist were cut short when he suffered a stroke in his mid-forties.
This diptych (or part of a triptych) captures a scene from New Year’s Flowers: An Ichikawa Soga Play (Hatsuhana Mimasu Soga), one of the countless Kabuki plays that riffs on the medieval vendetta narrative Tale of the Soga Brothers. Oniō Shinzaemon, portrayed here with his wife, is a retainer of Soga Jūrō, one of the protagonists of the story and its theatrical versions.
This diptych (or part of a triptych) captures a scene from New Year’s Flowers: An Ichikawa Soga Play (Hatsuhana Mimasu Soga), one of the countless Kabuki plays that riffs on the medieval vendetta narrative Tale of the Soga Brothers. Oniō Shinzaemon, portrayed here with his wife, is a retainer of Soga Jūrō, one of the protagonists of the story and its theatrical versions.
Artwork Details
- 勝川春好画 「初花みます曽我」 初代中村里好の鬼王女房月小夜・三代目市川八百蔵の鬼王新左衛門
- Title: The Onnagata Actor Nakamura Rikō I as Oniō nyōbō Tsukisayo and Ichikawa Yaozō III as Oniō Shinzaemon
- Artist: Katsukawa Shunkō (Japanese, 1743–1812)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: 1785, 1st month
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Diptych of woodblock prints (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper; hosoban
- Dimensions: Image (each): 12 11/16 × 5 13/16 in. (32.2 × 14.7 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Lent by Lee E. Dirks
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art