Utagawa Toyokuni I (初代歌川豊国) (artist 1769 – 02/24/1825)
Sawamura Gennosuke I (澤村源之助) as Obiya Chōemon ( 帯や長右衛門)
09/1807
9.8 in x 14.4 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock print
Signed: Toyokuni ga (豊国画)
Publisher: Miyakawaya Seiemon
(Marks 328 -seal 16-011)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Lyon Collection - another Toyokuni I of this actor with his crest prominently displayed
Kunitachi College of Music Library (via Ritsumeikan University)
Drexel Museum "The bodies of Obiya Chōemon, a man aged about fifty, and Shinanoya Ohan, a girl of fourteen or fifteen, were found floating in the Katsura River some time before 1728, when the first of many plays and lyrical ballads about them was produced, at the Sanjūrō-za in Ōsaka... It turned out that they had in fact been murdered by a robber, but popular fancy soon made the affair into a double suicide, for which various explanations were invented."
Quoted from: Images of Eighteenth-century Japan: Ukiyoe Prints from the Sir Edmund Walker Collection by David Waterhouse, Royal Ontario Museum, 1975, page 208. (This print is not shown. Instead is the image of Ohan and Choemon in a hashira-e from the 1790s by Utamaro.)
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This print has seen better days. It is soiled, torn, worn and faded. But even as it is, the figure of Gennosuke I could be identified, not by the printed text in the upper right, but by this actor's personal crest, a partial chrysanthemum flower, seen in a circular pattern. It is what decorates his under-robe and can be seen clearly on the front of the lower part of his costume.
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We have added a jpeg of an 1812 print by Kunisada, Toyokuni I's most successful student, of Matsumoto Koshirō V playing Obiya Chōemon in the play Atsurae shusu no obiya (誂繻子帯屋). This could be translated loosely as the 'Custom-made Satin Obi Shop.'
For a long time this jpeg image has been a favorite of our, if for no other reason than the appearance of that odd object located behind the actor. It was a mystery, at first, that needed to be explained. Eventually we found out that it is a construction made out of dried bonito fish, tied together, to look like an 'ebi' or shrimp, a very felicitous sign. Then recently we realized that is of an actor in the same role, that of Obiya Chōemon, as the featured print on this page by Toyokuni I from 1807. Not only that, but it shows a very early print by Kunisada, one of Toyokuni's students, who went on to be the most prolific and successful ukyo-e artist of the 19th century.
We might add that Shigeru Shindō, the author of Kunisada: The Kabuki Actor Portraits (國貞: 役者絵の世界) from 1993 said on page 130: "The reason why the back of the abacus has the description of “Bunka 9 Mizunoe Saru Doshi Gogatsu Kichijitsu Bakurocho Nichome Kado Eijudo Nishimuyara” is to advertise Nishimuraya, the publisher of this print." (JSV)
actor prints (yakusha-e - 役者絵) (genre)
Mikawaya Seiemon (三河屋清右衛門) (publisher)
Sawamura Gennosuke I (初代沢村源之助: 1/1791 to 10/1811) (actor)