Title page (Mokuroku) for the series The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays (Kabuki Jūhachi-ban)
歌舞伎十八番 目録
- Date:
- 1895
- Medium:
- Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
- Source:
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
歌舞伎十八番 目録
The mokuroku (title page) of Torii Kiyosada's 1895 series The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays (Kabuki Jūhachi-ban), an authoritative late-Meiji codification in colour woodblock of the canonical Ichikawa family repertoire. The Kabuki Eighteen had been formally proclaimed in 1832 by Ichikawa Danjūrō VII as the official Ichikawa-lineage repertoire of bravura aragoto pieces - mostly demon-quelling, warrior, and supernatural plays - that the Ichikawa house had performed across generations. By the 1890s Ichikawa Danjūrō IX (1838-1903), the leading kabuki actor of the Meiji era and the figure most identified with the modernisation of the kabuki stage, was approaching the end of his career, and Kiyosada designed this eighteen-plus-title-page series in collaboration with his son Torii Kiyotada VII to document Danjūrō IX's interpretation of each of the eighteen canonical roles. The mokuroku functions both as a contents page listing the eighteen plays in turn and as a frontispiece for the bound or albummed compilation of the series, with the eighteen plays appearing as a unified set: Shibaraku, Kanjinchō, Sukeroku, Kenuki, Kagekiyo, Narukami, Uwanari, Kamahige, Fuwa, Jayanagi, Zōhiki, Uirō Uri, Yanone, Nanatsumen, Kan'u, Oshimodoshi, Gedatsu, and Fudō. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston preserves a complete set of the series - one of the most thorough extant institutional holdings of late Meiji actor-print publishing. The Torii school's continuous relationship with the Edo (and after 1868, Tokyo) kabuki theatres had stretched across two centuries by the time Kiyosada and Kiyotada VII produced this set, and the series functioned as both a tribute to Danjūrō IX and a self-conscious memorial to the Torii lineage itself as the print form approached the end of its commercial viability.
歌舞伎十八番 毛抜
1895
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
大江戸しばゐねんぢうぎやうじ 猿若狂言
1897
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
歌舞伎十八番 勧進帳
1896
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
歌舞伎十八番 暫
1895
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
Title page (Mokuroku) for the series The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays (Kabuki Jūhachi-ban) (歌舞伎十八番 目録) was created by Torii Kiyosada (鳥居清貞) in 1895.