KUNISADA • Goemon • Ο μιμητής Kuronushi • Ιαπωνική ξυλογραφία • Ουκιγιο-ε - Ιαπωνία - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞, 1786–1865)
Series: 見立白波六歌撰 — Mitate Shiranami Rokkasen, "Selected Underworld Characters for the Six Poetic Immortals"

This sheet: 偽ス黒主 — "The Imitation Kuronushi": the poet Ōtomo no Kuronushi reimagined as a famous thief
Subject: 石川五右衛門 Ishikawa Goemon, the great outlaw of legend — here in the person of the actor Nakamura Shikan IV (四代目中村芝翫)

Date: Bunkyū 1 (1861)
Publisher: Hiranoya Shinzō (平のや, Yorozuchō)
Block-cutter: Hori Take (彫竹) — Yokokawa Takejirō, a leading engraver of the day
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), nishiki-e — with burnished blacks (shōmen-zuri)
Format: Ōban tate-e — approx. 36.5 × 24.5 cm (14 × 9⅝ in.)
Holdings: This design is held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Birmingham Museum of Art
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IMPRESSION & COLOURS

Excellent. A strong, crisp impression: the deep black of the robe is burnished (shōmen-zuri) so that it catches the light and gleams when the sheet is tilted — a deluxe touch that survives beautifully here. The hair is carved with great delicacy, and the colours are rich and well preserved: the indigo night ground, vermilion cartouche and plum blossom, cream snow-roundels, and the blue-and-gold woven cord at the breast.

PAPER

In excellent condition, with album backing on the reverse. Light, even toning consistent with age is to be expected and is entirely normal for a sheet of this period.
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The Subject — A Court Poet in a Thief's Clothing
Against a deep indigo night sits a magnificent half-length figure: heavy-browed, sidelong-glancing, the great sweep of black hair carved strand by strand, a burnished black robe scattered with cream snow-roundels, and a thick blue-and-gold cord knotted at the breast. This is the actor Nakamura Shikan IV in the role of Ishikawa Goemon — the most famous thief in all of Japanese legend.

The conceit of the sheet is announced in its two cartouches. The red title-strip at upper right, framed by sprays of plum blossom, reads "The Imitation Kuronushi"; the lobed cartouche at upper left names Ishikawa Goemon and carries his celebrated death-poem. Kunisada is matching one of the refined Six Poetic Immortals of classical verse, Ōtomo no Kuronushi, with a notorious outlaw — the high culture of the Heian court yoked to the world of the stage rogue.

It is a pairing with real wit behind it. Kuronushi, for all his place among the great poets, had long since acquired a second life on the stage as a scheming villain — so to cast him here as a celebrated criminal is a joke an Edo audience would have caught at once.
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Ishikawa Goemon — The Outlaw and His Last Words
Ishikawa Goemon is the great gallant thief of Japanese legend — a semi-historical bandit of the late sixteenth century who, the stories say, robbed the rich and defied the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi himself. Captured at last, he is famously said to have been executed by being boiled alive in an iron cauldron, a death so notorious that an old-fashioned iron bath is still called a Goemon-buro to this day. On the kabuki stage he became the archetype of the swaggering, large-hearted rogue.

The verse in the cartouche is his legendary jisei (death poem): "Ishikawa ya, hama no masago wa tsukiru tomo, yo ni nusubito no tane wa tsukimaji" — "Though the sands on the beach may run dry, never in this world shall the seed of thieves run out." Defiant to the end, it is exactly the note this mitate means to strike.
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The Series — Poets Recast as Rogues
Mitate Shiranami Rokkasen takes one of the most elegant subjects in Japanese art — the Six Poetic Immortals (Rokkasen) named in the preface to the tenth-century Kokin Wakashū — and stands it on its head. The word shiranami ("white waves") was Edo slang for thieves, and the genre of swaggering thief-plays was known as shiranami-mono. Across six designs, Kunisada pairs each immortal poet with a famous stage outlaw, completing each with a parody-poem in the manner of the original.

The set was published in 1861 by Hiranoya Shinzō, late in Kunisada's long career and at the height of his command of the dramatic actor portrait. These are confident, richly produced sheets — bold close-up design, sumptuous costume, fine carving by Hori Take and the burnishing seen here. Impressions of this Kuronushi / Goemon design are held in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Birmingham Museum of Art.