Puppeteer

Held by the Art Institute of Chicago, this hand-colored urushi-e of around 1730 depicts a puppeteer, a figure from one of Edo Japan's vibrant street-performance traditions. Itinerant puppeteers were a familiar sight in the entertainment districts of the shogunal capital, and their colorful costumes and elaborate stage props made them natural subjects for ukiyo-e printmakers interested in the broader theatrical world that surrounded kabuki. Toshinobu's hosoban shows the figure with the puppet and accessories that identify his trade, rendered in the crisp Okumura linework that defined the school's printed output. The lacquered urushi blacks contrast with the hand-applied pinks and yellows of the costume, and the elongated proportions of the figure are characteristic of the artist's mature manner. The Art Institute's impression is a fine example of Toshinobu's engagement with subjects beyond named kabuki actors, drawing instead on the popular street performers who shared the entertainment economy of early-eighteenth-century Edo. The disguise or vendor conceit reflects the period's enduring fascination with mitate, the substitution or parody mode in which contemporary fashionable figures stood in for classical or legendary subjects, and it allowed Toshinobu to indulge his characteristic taste for elaborate textile patterns, finely worked accessories, and the kind of small narrative details that reward close looking in the hand-colored urushi-e tradition.