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Lot Essay
Celebrated beauties of the day appear as characters of the drama Kanadehon Chushingura.
The scene parodies Act III, "Attack in the Kamakura Palace." A girl of the Hishiya teahouse, on the right, impersonates En'ya Hangan, who wounds the villain Ko no Mononao, here Takashima Ohisa on the left, holding a curtain also inscribed Takashima. The woman in the center, restraining "Hangan," is Osei of the Fukuju teahouse playing Kakogawa Honzo.
The women's names do not appear on the print, probably because this series was published just before the issuance of regulations forbidding the indication of names of women other than courtesans in eighth month of Kansei 8 (1796). Thereafter the publisher had to remove all names.
For a complete set with women's names in the Fitzwilliam Museum see Asano Shugo and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo/London: Asahi Shinbunsha and The Trustees of the British Museum, 1997), pl. 210. Other impressions of this image are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (without names).
The scene parodies Act III, "Attack in the Kamakura Palace." A girl of the Hishiya teahouse, on the right, impersonates En'ya Hangan, who wounds the villain Ko no Mononao, here Takashima Ohisa on the left, holding a curtain also inscribed Takashima. The woman in the center, restraining "Hangan," is Osei of the Fukuju teahouse playing Kakogawa Honzo.
The women's names do not appear on the print, probably because this series was published just before the issuance of regulations forbidding the indication of names of women other than courtesans in eighth month of Kansei 8 (1796). Thereafter the publisher had to remove all names.
For a complete set with women's names in the Fitzwilliam Museum see Asano Shugo and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo/London: Asahi Shinbunsha and The Trustees of the British Museum, 1997), pl. 210. Other impressions of this image are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (without names).