Actors as Fujisawa Shiro, Asari Yoichi, and Hangaku, from an untitled series of half-block images of kabuki scenes
- Date:
- c. 1851/52
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
From an 1846 untitled series of half-block kabuki scenes, this Utagawa Toyokuni Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) print held by the Art Institute of Chicago shows actors in the roles of Fujisawa Shiro, Asari Yoichi, and Hangaku. The half-block format - [oban](/glossary/oban) panels cut to roughly half their usual height - had practical and economic motives during the post-Tenpo period: cheaper sheets used less paper, simpler color schemes saved on impressions, and a series organized around a uniform format could be marketed to a broad audience as a compact run of theatrical images. Untitled groups of this kind survive in museum collections and have been reconstructed by curators on the evidence of style, signature, and format; the Art Institute's record identifies this sheet by its three roles and assigns it to such a series without naming a formal title. The composition arranges the three characters along the horizontal half-block in a procession-like grouping: Fujisawa Shiro, the warrior figure; Asari Yoichi, the Genpei-era archer whose legend was a kabuki touchstone; and Hangaku, the famous female warrior of the same period, who recurs in Edo plays. Toyokuni's drawing reduces the figures to the essentials of role identification - costume, weapon, posture - and the Utagawa printers carry the design with the firm outline and patterned color of the workshop's mature practice. As an example of the half-block subgenre, the sheet helps document how the Utagawa Toyokuni studio adapted its [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) production to changing publishing economics in the mid-1840s without abandoning the role-identification discipline that defined its work.
early 1830s
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1796
Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper
1769–1825
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Woodblock print
Woodblock print
c. 1830/35
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Actors as Fujisawa Shiro, Asari Yoichi, and Hangaku, from an untitled series of half-block images of kabuki scenes was created by Utagawa Toyokuni I (歌川豊国) in c. 1851/52.
Actors as Fujisawa Shiro, Asari Yoichi, and Hangaku, from an untitled series of half-block images of kabuki scenes depicts mount fuji.