Kabuki Actor, Nakamura Utaemon V

Ota Masamitsu's portrait of Nakamura Utaemon V belongs to his ongoing project of documenting the great performers of the Showa-era stage in the format of shin-hanga yakusha-e. Nakamura Utaemon V (1865-1940) was the foremost onnagata of his generation, an actor whose female-role performances were considered the standard against which all rivals were measured, and whose technical command of dance, voice, and posture made him a living archive of kabuki tradition. In this Japanese woodblock print, Ota Masamitsu places Utaemon V within the tightly cropped, half-length frame that the actor-print tradition has favored since the Edo period, allowing the carved costume patterns and the painted face to do the expressive work. The shin-hanga movement, which arose in the early twentieth century under publishers such as Watanabe Shozaburo, sought to revive the collaborative system of artist, carver, and printer that had produced the masterpieces of ukiyo-e, but applied that system to modern subjects rendered with contemporary sensibility. Ota Masamitsu's actor prints sit firmly within that revival, and they share concerns with the better-known yakusha-e of Natori Shunsen, who likewise made Utaemon V a recurring subject. The print preserves not only a likeness but a moment in the cultural history of Japan, when an aging onnagata represented the continuity of an art form that was beginning to negotiate with cinema and modern theatre. The image is accessible through ukiyo-e.org, which aggregates Ota Masamitsu's portrait series alongside other twentieth-century Japanese woodblock prints.