US$480.00 | ![]() |
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[An untitled surimono featuring poems by kabuki actors]
[Hasegawa], Sadanobu [II] [illustrated by]; Fukusuke, Tokizō, Danjurō ... [et al.] [poems by].
[Japan: publisher unidentified, ca. early Meiji period (1870-80s?)].
A surimono (woodblock-printed leaf) featuring twentytwo poems, seemingly all by kabuki actors, and an illustration of a flaming jewel by the Osaka-based artist Hasegawa Sadanobu II (1848-1886). It seems likely that the group of performers, who appear to be predominantly from the Nakamura line of actors from Osaka, produced the print to commemorate the name changes of Gadō, Fukusuke, Tamashichi, and Tokizō, and commissioned Sadanobu to create the illustration. The print uses metallic pigments, which have since oxidised, and proliferous shomenzuri burnishing. An extremely scarce, perhaps unrecorded, surimono documenting the name changes of some of the most prominent kabuki actors of the early Meiji period.
One colour woodblock-printed loose leaf, complete. Some soiling, a few marks and creases, offsetting, three folds. 51.7 x 38.5 cm.