Acrobats

An Utagawa-school print of acrobatic performers by Utagawa Sadafusa, dated by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to approximately 1847-1852 and held in the Bigelow collection. Acrobat prints (karuwaza-e or kyokuba-e) were a distinctive sub-genre of late-Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) that documented the troupes of itinerant performers who appeared at temple-festival grounds, street fairs, and impromptu venues in the city's entertainment districts. Acrobats demonstrated feats of balance, contortion, juggling, rope-walking, and animal tricks at locations such as the Asakusa temple grounds, the Ryōgoku bridge, and other Edo gathering places, often as part of misemono (curiosity shows) that paid no regard to the licensing and respectability conventions that governed the kabuki theatres. The depiction of acrobats in single-sheet ukiyo-e allowed Utagawa designers to display dynamic figural compositions of unusual physicality, distinct from the stately portraits of kabuki actors and bijin that constituted most of their output. Sadafusa's print belongs to this lively documentary strand of late-Edo print culture and demonstrates his ability to handle the rapid movement and inventive grouping that the subject demanded. The MFA Boston catalogue records the work as part of the broad Sadafusa holding in the William Sturgis Bigelow collection of Edo woodblock prints. The dating to circa 1847-1852 places the print in the mid-career period of Sadafusa's output, contemporary with the height of Kunisada's own production and within the broader competitive ecosystem of Utagawa-school design.