Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII (八代目市川団十郎) as Soga Gorō Takimune (曽我五郎時宗) on the right and Ichimura Takenojō V as Soga Jūrō Sukenari (曽我十郎祐成) on the left - the center and right panels of a triptych
05/07/1851
19 in x 14.125 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Toyokuni ga (豊国画)
Publisher: Shimizuya Naojirō
(Marks 468 - seal 01-081)
Censor seals: Mera and Watanabe
Seal: Shita-uri
Waseda University - left panel
Waseda University - right panel
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - right panel
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - left panel
Tokyo Metropolitan Library - presented as a triptych
Victoria and Albert Museum - the whole triptych
Waseda University - the far left missing panel
Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm - right-hand panel
Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm - left-hand panel This scene, which is taking place in the rain, may represent Act 8 of the Soga monogatari.
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These two panels - the center and right - of a triptych made to commemorate a performance of the play Hōraizan Yatsugi Soga (蓬莱山...曽我) at the Ichimuri-za in 1/1851. So far we know absolutely nothing about this specific play other than its title and when it was staged. We found the title at the Victoria and Albert web site.
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Samuel L. Leiter noted of the Soga genre that "No other subject has been so frequently dramatized in Japan, there being something like three hundred Soga plays in kabuki alone."
Later Leiter added: "Soga plays proliferated in Edo during the first decade of the 1700s and by the 1730s the custom was established at each of the Edo sanza for the New Year's program (hatsuharu kyōgen) to include a Soga mono because of the auspiciousness. Earlier, the story had been a traditional feature of the summer performances in Kamigata centering on the bon festival in honor of the dead, but this custom died out in the mid-eighteenth century, whereas the New Year's tradition was maintained in Tokyo until the first decade of the twentieth century."
Source and quotes from: New Kabuki Encyclopedia..., Samuel L. Leiter, pp. 608 and 609.
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The term shita-uri as a special meaning according to Sarah Thompson in Undercurrents in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints in describing a multi-panel composition on pages 52-53: "A further concession to the reform laws, the print bears a special seal on each sheet reading shitauri, or "selling below," indicating that it could be sold only from the counter and not hung up for display at the front of the store."
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Who is the woman missing from this composition?
As we noted above in the title for this page these are two panels of a triptych - the center and right-hand panels. The missing left-hand panel features an image of Oiso no Tora, Soga Jūrō Sukenari's lover. In some of the accounts she was the one who pointed out to the Soga brothers Kudō Suketune's tent at the hunt at the foot of Mt. Fuji so they could take their revenge.
The National Theater of Japan wrote of this figure from the play Kotobuki Soga no Taimen ('The Revenge of the Soga Brothers': "Tora is a keisei (a high-class courtesan) from Oiso (modern-day Oiso in Kanagawa Prefecture), and the lover of Juro, the elder of the Soga brothers. She supports the brothers in secret, and is present at the place where the brothers confront their enemy, aiming to get revenge for their father. This character, as a courtesan at the peak of her popularity, displays elegance and dignity with few movements. According to a legend that has been passed down, after the brothers’ deaths following their revenge, she traveled around Japan mourning them, and passed on their story."
Ôiso no Tora is 大磯のとら.
The Soga stories presented by kabuki were preceded by those performed in the No theater and in joruri or puppet plays. According to Barbara Ellen Thornbury at the University of British Columbia in 1979: "Ichikawa Danjūrō I made Soga Gorō into a god-hero for the people of Edo. To do this he used the tradition that had built up behind Gorō in other dramatic forms and combined it with acting techniques inspired by Kimpira joruri, a form of ko-jōruri which flourished in Edo in the mid-seventeenth century. Danjūrō's achievement may be summarized in the word aragoto—for he was the founder of the "rough" style of kabuki, which not only made Edo kabuki distinctive from the wagoto, or "gentle," style of Kamigata kabuki, but also helped make kabuki as a whole a distinctive form of world drama."
"Aragoto, which was largely based on and represented by Soga plays, particularly the character Soga Gorō, was characterized by "the exaggerated movement and bombastic language appropriate to the superhuman prowess of warrior heroes" such as Gorō. The exaggerated movement and bombastic language survive today, but audiences are less responsive to the superhuman prowess of warrior heroes, which once made fantastic action and style of speech necessary and appropriate."
Shimizuya Naojirō (清水屋直次郎) (publisher)
actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII (八代目市川団十郎: 3/1832 - 6/8/1854) (actor)
Ichimura Takenojō V (五代目市村竹之丞: from1/1851 to 8/1851) (actor)
Soga brothers (曾我兄弟) (genre)