KUNISADA • Kaomise New Year Greetings • Τρίπτυχο • Ιαπωνική Ξυλογραφία • Ukiyo-e - Ιαπωνία - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada / Toyokuni III (歌川国貞・三代豊国, 1786–1865)

Title: 当春筆始見立色増若葉の門松吉例年頭之図 — Atarushun Fudehajime Mitate Iromasaru Wakaba no Kadomatsu, Kichirei Nentō no Zu ("Πρώτη πινελιά της Πρωτοχρονιάς, παρόμοιο με τη βαθύτερη αίσθηση των φρέσκων φύλλων σε θάμνο κορόμηλου, στην είσοδο της Πρωτοχρονιάτικης πύλης — Μια ευοίωνη σκηνή της έναρξης της χρονιάς").

Subject: A kaomise (顔見世, "face-showing") season backstage scene — the annual autumn/winter programme in which a theatre's full company for the coming year was introduced to the public. Here the actors and attendant women exchange the customary New Year's greetings among themselves, shown across a green room and staircase landing dressed with pine, bamboo, and flowering plum for the season. A comparable design of the same subject, also attributed to Toyokuni III, is held by the National Theatre of Japan (collection no. NA0075256000) and reproduced on the theatre's own kabuki-history education pages, which caption it exactly this way: actors at a kaomise exchanging New Year's greetings.

Format: Ōban triptych — three sheets, each ca. 36 × 24.5 cm (overall ca. 36 × 73.5 cm)
Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print) on hōsho paper
Date: Bakumatsu period, ca. 1855–65
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Condition: Very good impression with very good, fresh colour throughout. The paper is firm with a subtle texture. Clean and presentable. Please refer to the images for full detail!
----------------------------------------------------------------------

About the print

Kunisada — by this date signing as the third-generation Toyokuni — turns his triptych format into a group portrait of a theatre at New Year. Rather than a scene from a play, this is the company itself: actors in everyday dress bow and greet one another across a stepped interior, a lacquered document box carried between them, while two women in richly patterned kimono cross the right sheet. Pine and bamboo frame the composition at left, sprays of red plum bloom against a lattice screen at centre, and a long inscribed poem-sheet (shikishi) pinned above the stairs adds the literary flourish expected of a New Year subject — the "first brushwork" of the title likely referring to verses composed for the occasion.

The scene reflects a real institution of Edo–Meiji era kabuki: the kaomise season, when a theatre's newly contracted company for the year was formally presented, and the exchange of New Year's greetings among the cast was itself a subject artists returned to repeatedly. The National Theatre of Japan uses a design of this same theme and attribution to illustrate the genre on its own kabuki-history resource, underlining how representative — and how well-documented — this type of "behind the curtain" New Year scene is within Toyokuni III's late output.