Utagawa Yoshitaki (歌川芳滝) (artist 1841 – 1899)
Nakamura Komanosuke V (中村駒之助) as Kainosuke (甲斐之助) on the right and Nakamura Jakuemon I (中村雀右衛門) as Komakine Hachirō (駒木根八郎) to his left, in Irokurabe Aki no Nanakusa (色競秋七草)
08/1867
9.75 in x 13.875 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Yoshitaki (芳瀧)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - an 1873, Meiji, reprint of this diptych with changes
Hankyu Culture Foundation - right panel
Hankyu Culture Foundation - left panel
Lyon Collection - a later 1873 version of this diptych This diptych commemorates a performance of at the Naka Theater in the eighth month of 1867. Look closely at the bulge in the blue cloth behind the figure of Komakine Hachirō. You will see that this is caused by a stagehand all dressed in black. His feet which are visible is a dead giveaway. Hachirō is standing on the edge of the hanamichi, where it meets the stage. In the lower left you will see a bracket to hold a torch or lamp for lighting. And below the figure on the right you will notice a curved black line. This indicates that this stage could revolve if needed.
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Who are Hachirō and Kainosuke
Awashima Kainosuke (あわ島甲勢の助) and Komafune (Komakine?) Hachirō (駒夫根八郎) appear together in three compositions in the Lyon Collection. The two very similar diptychs by Yoshitaki from 1873 and in Hokuei pentaptych from 1834. While we still don't know the exact nature of these two roles, we do know, based on information provided by Roger Keyes, that these two characters performed in plays which dealt the early Christian converts in Japan and their opponents, traditionalist Japanese samurai.
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In 2017 Jan Leuchtenberger of the University of Puget Sound delivered a paper, 'Perpetually Deferred Christian Insurrection in Tokugawa period anti-Christian narratives', to the European Association for Japanese Studies (EAJS). The abstract read: "From around the time of the 1614 expulsion through the nineteenth century in Japan, anonymous texts chronicling the arrival and expulsion of the European missionaries circulated widely in manuscript despite censorship of works on Christianity. Though the narratives of the three main texts differ significantly in focus, they all paint an alarming picture of a Western enemy bent on the conquest of Japan from within. That enemy is the Nanbanjin, a kind of all-purpose Western Other, who rejects a direct military invasion because Japan is protected by its own gods. Instead, he chooses to use religion to gain converts with the expectation that they would then help the Nanban armies conquer Japan and steal its wealth. This Christian/Western villain is not only confined to these tales; his influence is evident in kabuki and jôruri theater of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which a foreign villain tries to trick people into letting him conquer Japan, and shows up in the anti-Western discourse of the early nineteenth century. Significantly, all these discourses paint the same picture of the deceitful Christian bent on conquest from within, and there are virtually no other representations of Christians during this period. Though the actual missionaries abandoned any plans for insurrection early on, the potential threat they posed was fixed in the literary record of their stay as a lasting trauma. The endurance and popularity of these narratives and the tropes they contain point to the importance of the Christian figures in them as repositories for anxiety about Japan's vulnerability to influences and powers beyond its borders. This paper examines the significance of the figure of the deceitful Christian conqueror in the context of Japan's engagement with the West and of eighteenth century discourses on Japan and its place in the world."
This should help to underscore the (as yet unknown) specificity of the theme of this diptych.
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Illustrated in:
1) Ikeda Bunko, Kamigata yakusha-e shūsei (Collected Kamigata Actor Prints), vol. 5, Ikeda Bunko Library, Osaka 2005, no. 270.
2) Schätze der Kamigata: Japanische Farbholzschnitte aus Osaka 1780-1880, MNHA (Musée national d'histoire et d'art Luxembourg), p. 137, #283, 2012.
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In 1873 this diptych was reprinted "...with the face and name of the actor on the left changed, made in 1873.2 for the play Keisei Nazuna no Sekku at the Kado Theater." There are other changes too. Click on the second link above from the Museum of Fine Art in Boston for a full view.
Nakamura Komanosuke V (五代目中村駒之助) (actor)
Nakamura Jakuemon I (初代中村雀右衛門: from 11/1851 to 8/18/1871) (actor)
actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
Kyōto-Osaka prints (kamigata-e - 上方絵) (genre)
Meiji era (明治時代: 1868-1912) (genre)