Good condition. Diptych, but separated. Description: The senior lady-in-waiting Tsubone Iwafuji 局岩藤 beating the young lady-in-waiting Churo Onoe 中老尾上 - from the kabuki play Kagamiyama Kokyo no Nishikie 加賀見山旧錦絵 Date: 1857 Artist: Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) Publisher: Sagamiya Tokichi 相模屋藤吉 (seal name: Shitaya Aito 下谷相ト) Type: yakusha-e 役者絵 actor images Medium: Polychrome vertical oban woodblock prints diptych (central and right panel of a triptych - left panel missing) Condition: Overall very good (proper signs of aging) Size: 34 x 48 Iwafuji is determined to destroy Onoe since she is an obstacle to her goal of controlling her clan. Onoe has been entrusted with a precious Buddhist statue, but when she is asked to present it, finds that it has been replaced with a zôri sandal, the result of Iwafuji's plotting. Iwafuji beats Onoe with the sandal in front of all the other women. Despite the injustice of the accusation, Onoe can no longer live with this shame and, as she leaves, full of grief and anguish, shows her determination to die. (source: kabuki 21) Author: Utagawa Kunisada 歌川 国貞 (1786 – 12 January 1865), also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III (三代 歌川 豊国, Sandai Otagawa Toyokuni), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. He is considered the most popular, prolific and commercially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19th-century Japan. In his own time, his reputation far exceeded that of his contemporaries, Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi. See Tokyo Metropolitan Library: http://archive.library.metro.tokyo.jp/da/detail?tilcod=0000000003-00013565