Actor Ichikawa Danzô III as Narukami in “Bird of the Capital: Komachi of the East” (“Miyakodori azuma Komachi”)
- Date:
- About 1768
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; hosoban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Katsukawa Shunsho's print at the Art Institute of Chicago shows Ichikawa Danzo III in the role of the priest Narukami in the kabuki production Miyakodori Azuma Komachi (Bird of the Capital: Komachi of the East). The Narukami story is one of the Eighteen Great Plays of the Ichikawa family (the kabuki juhachiban) and dramatizes the sorcerer-monk Narukami's seduction by the Princess Taema (Taema-hime), who has been sent to break his power and release the rain after his magic has caused a devastating drought. The role demands extraordinary range: ascetic Buddhist gravitas in the early scenes giving way to erotic confusion and finally to a tremendous rage transformation in the climactic moments. Although the Narukami juhachiban was traditionally associated with the Ichikawa Danjuro lineage, Ichikawa Danzo III was a major Edo actor of the Meiwa period whose interpretation of the part Shunsho documented in this design. The print captures the figure with the focused attention to individual physiognomy that distinguished Shunsho's Katsukawa school yakusha-e from the schematic Torii tradition that preceded it. As founder of the Katsukawa school of Edo ukiyo-e, Shunsho was the principal innovator of late eighteenth-century actor portraiture, replacing generic theatrical types with carefully observed individual likeness and training a generation of pupils whose work carried his style forward into the An'ei and Tenmei eras. The Art Institute impression preserves the firm linework and considered tonal organization that defined the master's production. The print remains a valuable primary document of the Narukami tradition in mid-eighteenth-century kabuki and of Ichikawa Danzo III's contribution to the role's interpretive history.
c. 1772
Color woodblock print; aiban
c. early 1780s
color woodblock print
c. 1768
Color woodblock print; hosoban
Actor Ichikawa Danzô III as Narukami in “Bird of the Capital: Komachi of the East” (“Miyakodori azuma Komachi”) was created by Katsukawa Shunshō (勝川春章) in About 1768.
Actor Ichikawa Danzô III as Narukami in “Bird of the Capital: Komachi of the East” (“Miyakodori azuma Komachi”) depicts birds & flowers.
