Yakusha sanjuni so 役者三拾二相 (Thirty-two Facial Aspects of Actors)

Yakusha sanjuni so (Thirty-two Facial Aspects of Actors) is a yakusha-e series in which Utagawa Toyokuni borrows the framework of an older Utamaro bijin formula, the so-called physiognomic series, and applies it to the world of the Edo kabuki star. Each design in the set focuses on a single actor caught in a particular facial expression or temperamental register, with cartouche text glossing the so or aspect being illustrated. The British Museum impression of this design, AN00198373_001, is available via ukiyo-e.org at https://ukiyo-e.org/image/bm/AN00198373_001_l. Toyokuni's approach in the series is consciously analytic: by removing most of the elaborate stage costume and bringing the figure forward to near bust-length, he allows the viewer to read the face as an object of study, much as a connoisseur might pore over the facial types of bijin in an earlier generation. The sheets thus straddle two ukiyo-e modes, the okubi-e portrait and the categorised type print, and they consolidate Toyokuni I's reputation as the leading interpreter of actor likeness in early nineteenth-century Edo. For collectors and historians of Japanese woodblock prints, the series is also valuable evidence of how the Utagawa school adapted Utamaro's pioneering schema in the service of an actor-centred market that, by Toyokuni's day, dominated commercial ukiyo-e production.