Artist: Ueno Tadamasa 上野忠雅 (1904–1970), later Torii Tadamasa Series: Kabuki Sugata-goyomi 歌舞伎姿暦 (Calendar of Kabuki Figures / Calendar of Kabuki Roles and Actors) Sheet: 二月 — February Subject: Shunkyō Kagamijishi 春興鏡獅子 — Nochi-jite 後シテ (the lion-spirit role of the second half) Date: c. 1950 Format: yoko-ōban (horizontal ōban), full margins approx. 40*27 cm Technique: mokuhanga — multi-block colour woodblock on hōsho 1. Impression and colour A strong, bold impression befitting the most dramatic warrior in the Kabuki repertoire. The black of Benkei's great suo (素袍) robe is printed dense and even, with the gold Sanskrit-derived characters (bonji) on the sleeves standing out with metallic clarity. The face is rendered with controlled precision — the heavy brows, the glowering downward gaze, the faint blue-grey shading at the jawline — all printed with the confidence of a first-rate workshop. The costume beneath the robe is a riot of colour: red and gold brocade with hexagonal kikkō patterns, auspicious motifs of cranes and plum blossom, and a green-and-red checked pattern at the collar and inner robe. The white pompoms (bonten) of the suzukake mountain-priest vestment are rendered as soft tufts against the dark ground. Some minor foxing spots visible in the upper margin area. 2. Paper and condition Heavy hōsho paper with full margins. Excellent overall condition. Some minor foxing, mainly visible on the verso, with the front largely unaffected. 3. The Subject — Benkei in Kanjinchō Kanjinchō (勧進帳, The Subscription List) is arguably the single most famous play in all of Kabuki. Adapted from the Noh play Ataka and first performed in 1840 by Ichikawa Danjūrō VII, it tells the story of the fugitive warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune and his loyal retainer, the warrior-monk Musashibō Benkei, as they attempt to pass through the Ataka barrier gate disguised as mountain priests (yamabushi) collecting subscriptions for the rebuilding of Tōdai-ji temple. The barrier is guarded by the suspicious Togashi, who demands proof of their mission. In the play's climactic moment, Benkei produces a blank scroll and improvises a reading of it as though it were the official subscription list — bluffing with such magnificent authority that Togashi is momentarily persuaded. When the barrier guard begins to recognise Yoshitsune, Benkei does the unthinkable: he strikes his own lord with his staff, pretending to berate a lowly porter, knowing that no retainer would ever raise a hand against his master. The ruse succeeds, and Togashi — moved equally by Benkei's cunning and his agonising loyalty — allows the party to pass. Tadamasa's print captures Benkei at the height of the confrontation. The massive figure fills nearly the entire composition, the great black robe spread wide like the wings of a crow, the face set in an expression of ferocious concentration — brows furrowed, eyes locked in a piercing sidelong glare. One sleeve sweeps forward dramatically, its gold inscriptions catching the light. Everything about the design communicates sheer physical and psychological force: the man who will lie, blaspheme, and beat his own lord to save him. It is a portrait of loyalty pushed to its absolute limit. 4. The artist and the series Ueno Tadamasa (1904–1970), born Ueno Katsumi, was the most important Kabuki print artist of the mid-twentieth century. He trained under Torii Kiyotada VII (Kiyotada IV in some numberings, 1875–1941), the head of the Torii school — the painter-printmaker lineage that had supplied Edo's Kabuki theatres with billboards and actor prints since the seventeenth century. The syllable tada in his artist name was a direct gift from his master's name, Kyotada. In 1949 the Torii family granted him the right to take their family name itself, and he became Tadamasa Torii — an extraordinary honour that confirmed him as their successor. The Kabuki Sugata-goyomi (Calendar of Kabuki Figures) is a series of twelve sheets, one for each month of the year, each devoted to a different celebrated Kabuki role. The bold designs feature dramatically cropped compositions that focus on facial expression and hairstyle, rendered with strong calligraphic line and vivid colour, bringing the spectacular world of Kabuki to life. It is one of Tadamasa's finest series and is rarely seen complete on the market. 5. Two roads after Edo: where this print stands In the twentieth century, woodblock prints of Kabuki took two clearly divergent paths. One road was refined, atmospheric, and deeply influenced by Western pictorial values — the tradition of Natori Shunsen and Ōta Masamitsu (Gakō), working under Watanabe Shōzaburō and other shin-hanga publishers, who treated the Kabuki actor as a psychological subject and surrounded him in soft tonal modelling and naturalistic colour. The other road remained loyal to the bold conventions of Edo yakusha-e — flat fields, decorative pattern, exaggerated kumadori, and the theatricality of the Torii school billboard tradition. This road was led by Torii Kiyotada IV/VII and carried into the postwar decades by his pupil Ueno Tadamasa, the present artist. Prints of this second tradition occupy a fascinating position. They are not quite ukiyo-e in the Edo sense — too modern, too synthesised, too aware of design as design. And they are not shin-hanga either — too flat, too graphic, too unwilling to soften the savage stylisation of the Kabuki stage into atmospheric mood. They stand in their own territory: expressive, declarative, almost poster-like in their graphic boldness, yet rooted in a craft tradition with three hundred years of continuous practice behind it. The Kagamijishi sheet is a textbook case — the ground is a single graded gold field, the figure is reduced to silhouette, line and pigment, and yet every line carries the weight of the Torii school's accumulated stagecraft. It is precisely this independence from both camps — ukiyo-e and shin-hanga — that makes Tadamasa's prints so distinctive, and increasingly so as collectors come to recognise the originality of what he was doing.