TOSHUSAI SHARAKU (ACTIVE 1794–1795), EDO PERIOD, LATE 18TH CENTURY | OSAGAWA TSUNEYO II AS IPPEI'S SISTER OSAN

The life and work of Toshusai Sharaku is a mystery and thereby a subject of much fascination and research. Virtually nothing is known of this great master of ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking other than his name, the name of his publisher, Tsutaya Jusaburo, and the 144 known designs which bear his name. Until now, scholars are yet to uncover his true identity, and it is only thanks to the careful piecing together of scant contemporary written source material, such as the biographical manuscripts on ukiyo-e artists, Ukiyo-e Ruiko, together with an acknowledgment of his large artistic output, that it has been possible to develop an understanding of Sharaku’s success and a sense of how he might have been perceived by his peers.

Sharaku’s career spanned a period of seemingly just nine months, from the fifth month of 1794 to the first month of 1795, during which time he attended numerous kabuki productions, a theatre genre hugely popular with the prospering middle class, recording what he saw via the medium of the woodblock print. No “apprentice” designs have ever come to light and it is therefore impossible to track his artistic development from apprentice to master. Owing to the “sudden” appearance of his technically and stylistically fully developed designs, some have speculated on whether the name Sharaku might have been a temporary pseudonym for a well-known contemporary artist engaging in new subject matter, namely that of Kabuki actors, but this supposition remains unfounded.

Only twenty-eight published prints are known to have survived from what has been dubbed the "first period" of Sharaku's nine-month long career. These prints provide an intimate and close-up up view of an actor, his identity revealed by his mon, in half-length portraying a character in a kabuki play. Much emphasis has been placed on Sharaku’s ability to have rendered not only the depiction of fictional kabuki characters, but also a more in-depth and emotional interpretation of the actors themselves. In order to ensure that his subjects were in the spotlight, Sharaku placed them against a dark monochrome and mica-sprinkled background, their own virtual and two-dimensional stage. The identity of the actors, the characters they played and the plays in which they performed, has been made possible by the archival research undertaken by Louis Ledoux and Harold Henderson for their 1939 book The Surviving Works of Sharaku and subsequent discoveries by scholars such as Teruji Yoshida and Juzo Suzuki.

Here Sharaku portrayed the actor Osagawa Tsuneyo II portraying Ippei's sister Osan in the play Koinyobo somewake tazuna performed in the fifth month of 1794. First written as a puppet show, the play, which examines the themes of, and struggle between, amorous love and feudal loyalty, was adapted for the Kabuki stage and included all of the key elements of a good melodrama: illicit love, murder, betrayal and a happy ending. The character Osan is the sister of Ippei, the man-servant to the protagonist, Date no Yosaku, and is depicted in a rose-coloured kimono and head cloth with a black obi and strong black eyebrows with small petal-pink lips.

Other impressions are in various museum collections including The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession no. 11.14673 and The British Museum, London, accession no. 1909,0618,0.50.