Untitled

This print, untitled and undated in the catalogue record, is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (accession number O412377) and is part of an exceptionally large grouping of related sheets by Utagawa Yoshitaki preserved in the V&A's collection of Osaka kamigata-e. The grouping comprises dozens of related prints assembled under similar accession numbers and acquired together, evidently part of a sustained Yoshitaki series or set of [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) produced during the artist's mature Osaka career. The V&A's holdings of Osaka prints are among the most important outside Japan and were largely assembled in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries through gifts and purchases from collectors with deep ties to the kamigata-e tradition. This particular sheet, lacking an individual title and date in the catalogue but identified firmly as Yoshitaki's work, exemplifies the steady, high-volume yakusha-e output that defined his career: small-format chūban prints depicting actors on the Osaka stage, produced in close collaboration with local publishers and addressed to the dedicated fan audience of the Osaka theatres. The print is one of many Yoshitaki sheets in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection and, considered together with its related accessions, gives a sense of the scale and continuity of his late-period kamigata-e practice.