Artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳 (1797–1861) Title: A scene from Igagoe dōchū sugoroku 伊賀越道中双六, the Numazu act — the three roles named in cartouches: 呉服屋十兵衛 Gofukuya Jūbei (right sheet), 平作 Heisaku and 娘およね, "the daughter Oyone" (left sheet). Sawamura Sōjūrō V in the role of Jūbei. Technique: Nishiki-e (full-colour woodblock print) on washi Format: Ōban tate-e diptych, two separate sheets, each approx. 36 × 24 cm Date: c. 1848, with paired nanushi censor seals on each sheet Genre: Yakusha-e / shibai-e — kabuki actor print ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper & condition Minor toning across all three sheets; With some fading, soiling on the margins. Minor wormhole repairs on the bottom right margin. the composition still reads clearly. The paper is firm and supple throughout. Please check the images! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- About the print Night at Numazu on the Tōkaidō, in the collapsing house of Heisaku the porter. The draper Jūbei — travelling west on business, and unknowingly in the service of the family's sworn enemy — has woken to find someone going through his luggage for the medicine case he carries. He is on the right, in a striped travelling kimono, the inrō held out of reach in one hand and a look over his shoulder that has already worked out what is happening; the culprit is Oyone, Heisaku's daughter, caught on the floor at left and hiding her face in her sleeve, who wanted the ointment for her wounded husband. Heisaku looms over her with a lit paper taper, the andon lamp stand between the two sheets throwing the only other light in the room. What none of them yet knows is that Jūbei is Heisaku's long-lost son, given away as an infant — the recognition that turns the most famous act of the Igagoe vendetta cycle from a chance meeting on the road into tragedy. Kuniyoshi stages it as three isolated figures in an almost bare, cracked-plaster interior, with only the bolts of cloth behind Jūbei to say what he is and the taper and lamp to say what hour it is.