KUNISADA — Ένα ημερολόγιο δύο πεταλούδων στις περιοχές ψυχαγωγίας — *ΣΠΑΝΙΟ* ιαπωνικό ξυλογραφικό - Ιαπωνία - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada I / Toyokuni III (歌川国貞, 1786–1865)
Series: Untitled set; a companion design by Utagawa Kuniyoshi treats the two rival wrestlers from the same play using the identical gunbai device

Play: Futatsu Chōchō Kuruwa Nikki 双蝶々曲輪日記 — "A Diary of Two Butterflies in the Pleasure Quarters"
Theatre / Date: Ichimura-za, 6th month of Kaei 7 (1854)
Subject: Arashi Kichisaburō III as Nuregami Chōgorō (濡髪長五郎), the veteran sumō wrestler, and Ichikawa Kuzō II as Oseki (長吉姉お関), elder sister of his rival Chōkichi
Publisher: Ōtaya Takichi (太田屋多吉)
Seals: Aratame censor seal and Tiger-year date seal
Format: Ōban tate-e, approx. 36 × 24 cm
Technique: Nishiki-e on washi, with burnishing (shōmen-zuri) in the blacks and deliberate woodgrain printing (mokume-zuri) worked into the face of the fan
Reference: Documented in the Kuniyoshi Project archive, alongside its Kuniyoshi companion sheet
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Paper & condition

Very fine carving and printing, embellished with burnishing, and with the woodgrain integrated into the back of the fan. Tiny binding holes, minor wormholes across the sheet — nothing significant. The paper remains firm and supple.
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About the print

Futatsu Chōchō Kuruwa Nikki is one of the great sumō plays of the kabuki repertory. Written for the puppet theatre and first staged in Osaka in 1749, it turns on two wrestlers whose names both begin with chō — hence the "two butterflies" of the title, a pun rather than a description. The senior man, Nuregami Chōgorō, deliberately throws a bout to the brash young Hanaregoma Chōkichi, hoping the favour will be repaid; when Chōkichi discovers he has been handed the victory, his fury sets the whole tragedy in motion. Oseki, shown here, is Chōkichi's elder sister, who has raised him since their parents died and who runs the family rice shop — the setting of the confrontation between the two men.

What makes this sheet exceptional is not the subject but the frame. Kunisada has not simply drawn two half-length portraits: he has set them inside a gunbai, the lacquered war-fan carried by a sumō referee, rendered at full size with its cloth-wrapped handle, gilt cloud-pattern mounts and heavy knotted cords looping across the bottom of the sheet against a flat blue ground. For a play about sumō, the device is close to perfect — the referee's fan is the object that decides the bout, and the bout is what the entire plot hangs on. A companion sheet by Kuniyoshi, showing Chōkichi and Myōkan on the same fan, confirms that the two artists were working to a shared conceit, and prints from that collaboration are considerably less often seen than the standard Utagawa actor formats.

The printing rewards a close look, and this impression retains it. The face of the fan is printed with visible woodgrain — the block's own timber allowed to read through the brown, so the fan appears convincingly made of wood rather than merely coloured brown. The black of Chōgorō's collar and of the fan's handle is finished with burnishing, worked over with an agate or tooth to give a low sheen that catches the light in the hand and vanishes in reproduction. The hair of both figures is cut in fine kewari strands at the temples and nape, and the textiles are dense: Oseki in grey-blue with a patterned collar, Chōgorō in a great sweep of red printed with plum blossom and pine, against the deep black of his under-robe.

The characterisation is pure late Kunisada. Chōgorō is given the heavy jaw and downturned mouth of a man carrying something he cannot put down; Oseki looks away and past him, mouth slightly open. Kunisada (1786–1865), pupil of Toyokuni I and from 1844 the third to bear the Toyokuni name, dominated the Edo actor-print market for four decades; his work is held by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rijksmuseum.