KIYOTADA IV • Rare Aragoto/Onnagata Transformation Role • 1939 • Kabuki Japanese Woodblock Print • - Japan - 20th century

** Rare Aragoto/Onnagata Transformation Role — Torii Kiyotada VII's Deluxe "Ibaraki" (茨木) — The Witch Reclaims Her Severed Arm **

Title: Shinko Engeki Jisshu no uchi: Ibaraki (新古演劇十種之内 茨木) — "Ibaraki, from the Ten New and Old Kabuki Dance-Dramas"

Role: Tsuna no oba Mashiba, jitsu wa Ibaraki Dōji (綱の伯母真柴実は茨木童子) — "Tsuna's Aunt Mashiba — in truth the demon Ibaraki Dōji," shown at the climactic moment of her transformation. The role slip carries no actor's name, so none is asserted here.

Series: From Kiyotada VII's late deluxe group of kabuki role-portraits (the same series as his Musume Dōjōji, published under the Gekikadō Zuihitsu (劇雅堂随筆) imprint) — provisional: this specific sheet's place within that named group is inferred from style and signature, not independently confirmed in a catalogue

Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), deluxe edition — blind embossing (karazuri) in the border and ground, gauffrage in the textiles, fine bokashi gradation in the sky
Date: c. 1939 (group c. 1938–1940)
Format: Large format — approx. 44.5 × 29 cm (17½ × 11½ in.) on thick deluxe washi
Signature & Seals: Signed Kiyotada (清忠) in cursive in the upper-right cartouche with red artist's seal; title cartouche 京鹿子娘道成寺 upper left, with adjoining role slip
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Impression & Colors: Fresh and clean, with the deluxe printing showing to full effect — the smoky charcoal-grey bokashi of the ground, the saturated vermilion-orange of the outer robe, the crisp black keyblock in the wild white hair and facial contours, and the finely carved indigo-and-gold arabesque wave pattern scattered across the green under-kimono. The wide outer border carries a blind-embossed diamond-lattice pattern, and the narrow role slip appears to carry a mica ground.

Paper: Thick, high-quality washi with full margins. Light, even toning consistent with age is normal for a print of this period.
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About the Print

Ibaraki belongs to the Shinko Engeki Jisshu — the "Ten New and Old Kabuki Dance-Dramas" — a repertoire of set-piece dances (ie no gei) belonging to the Otowaya acting lineage. Kawatake Mokuami wrote it as a matsubame-mono, a dance-drama staged against a pine-board backdrop in imitation of Nō, expressly for Onoe Kikugorō V, who premiered it at Tokyo's Shintomi-za in 1883 opposite Ichikawa Sadanji I. Kikugorō V danced Mashiba/Ibaraki Dōji himself; the piece was later added to by Onoe Kikugorō VI, who contributed Migawari Zazen to complete the set of ten. The story descends from the older legend of Watanabe no Tsuna's duel with the demon at Rashōmon Gate: having severed the oni's arm, Tsuna keeps it under lock during a period of ritual seclusion, only for his aged aunt Mashiba to talk her way to his side, reclaim the arm by trickery, and reveal herself as Ibaraki Dōji before vanishing. It remains one of the most frequently revived pieces in the classical repertoire.

Torii Kiyotada VII stood at the head of a lineage that had painted kabuki theatre signboards for over two centuries, and in the last years of his career he turned that billboard sensibility toward a series of deluxe, small-edition role-portraits — prints that translate the flat, bold drawing of the Torii stage-bill tradition into a collector's format, finished with the embossing and gradated printing seen on this sheet. Where his Musume Dōjōji from the same group gave the series its rare onnagata/bijin register, this "Ibaraki" returns to the aragoto and transformation roles that otherwise dominate it — the demon-hag reveal being one of the great virtuoso turns in the classical kabuki repertoire.