Yaezaka Monsa, Kawara-nadeshiko (Yaezaka Monsa, Wild pink) / Tosei mitate sanju-rokkasen 當盛見立 三十六花撰 (Contemporary Kabuki Actors Likened to Thirty-Six Flowers (Immortals of Poetry))

This print extends Utagawa Toyokuni's Tosei mitate sanju-rokkasen (Contemporary Kabuki Actors Likened to Thirty-Six Flowers / Immortals of Poetry) series, pairing the role of Yaezaka Monsa with the kawara-nadeshiko or wild pink, a riverside flower of late summer celebrated in classical waka. The mitate device is again central: each actor is placed in equivalence to one of the canonical thirty-six immortals of poetry and to a flower whose qualities mirror those of the role, so that the viewer enjoys a triangular game of recognition between stage, garden and verse. Yaezaka Monsa belongs to the gallery of stoutly drawn male characters who populate the kabuki vendetta and courtesan plays, and the wild pink, with its slender stalk and resilient pink blooms, supplies an unexpectedly delicate counterweight. The British Museum impression (AN00431539_001) is accessible at https://ukiyo-e.org/image/bm/AN00431539_001_l. Toyokuni renders the actor with the firm contour drawing and dense textile pattern of his mature Edo ukiyo-e style, while a small panel of flowers and a flower-name cartouche embed the print's mitate apparatus directly within the picture frame. As yakusha-e, the sheet is both individual portrait and one node in a larger encyclopaedic project; collectors who assembled the full set would have ended up with a compact survey of the leading Edo kabuki stage talents as seen through Toyokuni I's eyes and through one of the most enduring lyric conceits in Japanese letters.