Ghost of Ihotata

Ghost of Ihotata, an actor print by Utagawa Toyokuni in the Art of Japan database on ukiyo-e.org (image c1e05b90a6c6887b138517c4a76fd29b), depicts one of the ghost roles that animated Edo kabuki's summer repertoire. Ghost plays (kaidan-mono) staged the unfinished business of restless spirits — wronged wives, betrayed lovers, vanquished warriors — and were a fixture of the hot-season theatre season, when their chilling effects offered psychological refreshment from the heat. Toyokuni, working at the head of the Utagawa school as the dominant designer of yakusha-e, made many designs of actors in these ghostly roles, balancing the supernatural staging — pale skin, dishevelled hair, tattered robes — with the recognizable likeness that fans demanded. His ghost prints stand at the beginning of a long Edo ukiyo-e tradition of supernatural imagery that his pupil Kuniyoshi and later Yoshitoshi would extend to remarkable extremes in the nineteenth century. The print captures the dramatic moment with strong outline and selective use of pattern, allowing the figure to read clearly against the simple ground. The ukiyo-e.org record makes the image available to international study, and contributes to ongoing research into the connections between Edo kabuki's supernatural repertoire and the visual conventions through which ukiyo-e designers gave it form.