
Yaegaki-hime, from Bunraku Doll Print Collection (Bunraku ningyō hanga-shū)
八重垣姫 — 文楽人形版画集
by Hasegawa Konobu (Sadanobu IV)
- Date:
- c. 1955
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print, oban format
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database

八重垣姫 — 文楽人形版画集
by Hasegawa Konobu (Sadanobu IV)
Yaegaki-hime, the princess of the Takeda house in the puppet play Honchō nijūshikō (The Twenty-Four Examples of Filial Piety), is the most celebrated female role in the bunraku repertory and a touchstone of the carved kashira (puppet head) maker's art. Hasegawa Konobu IV's print, issued by Maria Shobō around 1955 as part of the ten-sheet Bunraku Doll Print Collection (Bunraku ningyō hanga-shū), isolates the puppet against a flat decorative ground so that the dignity of the carving and the elaborate kimono pattern can be read clearly. The image follows the iconography of the play's celebrated kabuto no dan (helmet) scene, in which Yaegaki-hime crosses the frozen Lake Suwa carrying her beloved Katsuyori's enchanted helmet, and the printer's treatment of the figure's heavy embroidered uchikake (outer robe) is rendered in saturated polychrome with attention to gold-thread highlights. The print belongs to a postwar documentary project that follows in the tradition Konobu IV's predecessor Sadanobu III had inaugurated in 1926–27 with his forty-eight-sheet Illustrated Collection of Famous Japanese Puppets of the Osaka Bunrakuza. Documented through the Japanese Art Open Database from the Robert O. Muller research files, the impression preserves the saturated postwar color register and crisp keyblock that distinguish well-pulled examples of the Maria Shobō set.

雪だるま
c. 1950s
Color woodblock print

敦盛 — 文楽人形版画集
c. 1950s
Color woodblock print, oban format

定九郎 — 文楽人形版画集
c. 1950s
Color woodblock print, oban format

文楽人形 秀樹
c. 1950s
Color woodblock print

歌舞伎
Woodblock print

1955
Woodblock print

1928
Color lithograph

1930
Color lithograph
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Yaegaki-hime, from Bunraku Doll Print Collection (Bunraku ningyō hanga-shū) (八重垣姫 — 文楽人形版画集) was created by Hasegawa Konobu (Sadanobu IV) (長谷川小信 / 四代目長谷川貞信) in c. 1955.
Yaegaki-hime, from Bunraku Doll Print Collection (Bunraku ningyō hanga-shū) depicts kabuki.