Artist: Toyohara Kunichika (豊原国周, 1835–1900) Series: 市川團十郎演藝百番 Ichikawa Danjūrō engei hyakuban — "One Hundred Roles of Ichikawa Danjūrō," title cartouche upper left on a peony ground Title: 關兵衛 Sekibei, pink role cartouche Subject: Ichikawa Danjūrō IX as the barrier guard Sekibei — in truth Ōtomo no Kuronushi in disguise — from Tsumoru Koi Yuki no Seki no To (積恋雪関扉), "The Barrier Gate." A kyōka verse in the cream panel at upper right, in a calligraphic hand. Format: Ōban tate-e, ca. 35.5 × 24 cm Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print), deluxe printing on thick paper Date: 1898 (Meiji 31). Publication data in the left margin. Signature: 國周筆 Kunichika hitsu, with the artist's red seal Block-cutter: 彫弥太 Hori Yata Publisher: Fukuda Kamajirō and Gusokuya Kahei -------------------------------------------------------------------- Condition Very good impression with strong, fresh colour. Minor trimming, minor foxing confined to the margins, and some creasing through the centre. Please check the images! --------------------------------------------------------------------- About the print Seki no To turns on a disguise that goes wrong slowly. Ōtomo no Kuronushi means to bring down the government and take it for himself; to move unseen he takes the identity of Sekibei, a guard at a snowbound mountain barrier. He is also the man who murdered Yoshimine no Munesada's brother. The lovers Munesada and Ono no Komachi arrive at the gate, and over the course of the play Sekibei's cover comes apart — the decisive moment being when he swings a great axe at the ancient cherry tree beside the barrier and the tree's spirit steps out of it in the form of the courtesan Sumizome, who was his victim's lover. It is one of the finest villain roles in the repertoire precisely because the audience knows what he is from the first minute and has to watch him hold the mask up anyway. Kunichika catches him holding it. Danjūrō has the guard's red hachimaki wound over his head and the loose green robe of a nobody, but the face underneath is doing something else: the eyes lifted and hard, the brows heavy, the mouth pulled down at one corner. He raises a pale oval object bound with white cord in front of him and looks past it rather than at it. The black lacquered shaft laid across his lap, bound with blue cloth, is the axe. Behind, night-blue sky above a ground of drifting pink cherry — the tree that will give him away. The series is the last great thing Kunichika did. Fukuda Kamajirō and Gusokuya Kahei commissioned it in 1893: one hundred deluxe ōban sheets of Danjūrō IX in his roles, printed to a standard the Meiji trade rarely attempted, with saturated flat colour, burnishing, and metallic and textile effects across the costumes. It ran for a decade and outlived its maker — the final designs appeared in 1903, three years after Kunichika's death. He was sixty-three here and had been drawing Danjūrō for most of his working life. The affection in these sheets is not hidden.