Nakamura Shikan, Ichimura Uzaemon

This color woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), held by the Library of Congress (LCCN 2022630937), is a kabuki actor print by Utagawa Yoshitsuya depicting the actors Nakamura Shikan and Ichimura Uzaemon on stage giving speeches before a performance. According to the Library of Congress catalogue, Nakamura Shikan prostrates himself on the stage while Uzaemon looks down at him, the two actors apologizing to their audience for having been sick and missing performances - the kind of formal stage announcement (kōjō) that was a regular feature of Edo kabuki and a recognizable convention to nineteenth-century fans. The sheet dimensions are recorded as 36 by 25 cm, the standard vertical ōban format for late-Edo single-sheet [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e). The Library of Congress catalogues the print with a date of 1840, an early point in Yoshitsuya's career when, as a young pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, he would have been roughly eighteen years old; subject and format suggest a Tenpō-period actor sheet, although the Library's date is given as a single year and a wider Bakumatsu attribution is also possible. The print demonstrates that Yoshitsuya designed actor portraits in parallel with his better-known warrior subjects and is preserved in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division as part of its open-access Japanese prints collection.