An Actor's Image in a Sake Cup

An Actor's Image in a Sake Cup is a small-format actor portrait by Utagawa Toyoshige (Toyokuni II) of about 1825, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2001.715.5). The composition is a witty mitate (parodic transposition) of the standard yakusha-e bust portrait: instead of being presented as a free-standing oval portrait, the actor's face is shown reflected in the surface of a sake cup, framed by the rim and seen as if through the eye of a kabuki connoisseur lingering over a drink in a teahouse near the theatre district. This kind of small, allusive composition was a specialty of late Bunka and Bunsei yakusha-e, in which Toyokuni I's pupils experimented with framing devices, reflections, and partial views as a way of refreshing the highly codified actor-portrait format. Toyoshige's signature 'Toyokuni ga' on the print places it in the first years after his 1825 inheritance of the Toyokuni name. As a small-format work in a museum collection that holds relatively few Toyoshige sheets, the Met's impression is an important example of his lighter, more playful side, complementing the full-figure surimono of Danjūrō IV (JP1750) and the standing bijin-ga of the same period (JP1370).