Sarumawashi Yojiro, Teizen no sarusuberi (The Monkey Trainer, Yojiro, Crape Myrtle) / Tosei mitate sanju-rokkasen 當盛見立 三十六花撰 (Contemporary Kabuki Actors Likened to Thirty-Six Flowers (Immortals of Poetry))

From the series Tosei mitate sanju-rokkasen, this design pairs the kabuki monkey trainer Yojiro with the sarusuberi, the crape myrtle. The joke is built into the language: saru means 'monkey,' and sarusuberi literally promises a tree so smooth that 'even a monkey would slip' from it, so a monkey trainer planted beneath crape myrtle blossoms is the kind of double-edged visual pun Edo audiences relished. Utagawa Kunisada presents Yojiro at large scale, with the actor's features rendered in the broad, full-cheeked manner that defined his late portrait style. A small inset reserves space for the crape myrtle's papery pink panicles and, in the imagined poetic conceit of the series, a verse identifying the flower as one of thirty-six imagined immortals. Yakusha-e of this kind sat at the centre of the late-Edo print market: collectors bought them as portraits of star performers, as fashion plates documenting current costume, and as souvenirs of specific performances. By layering a classical mitate (parallel) over the everyday spectacle of street performance, Kunisada also flatters his buyers' literacy, asking them to read costume, role, plant and poem at the same time. The original print is in the British Museum and reproduced through ukiyo-e.org. As one of the most prolific designers of Edo ukiyo-e, Kunisada produced the actor portrait that effectively standardised the form for nineteenth-century printmaking. Image and bibliographic data are courtesy of ukiyo-e.org.