A few months back we enjoyed a sumizuri-e print (the Sukenobu image), and this month we have an example of the next 'step' that printmaking technology took in Japan. It's not completely clear just when the first multi-coloured printing was done here; it seems that maps of Edo were one of the first products to be created using multiple blocks - to show blue waterways, etc. Enterprising publishers then took up the technique for illustrative prints, although at first, they used only a very limited palette.

They restricted themselves to two colours, usually including as one of them a reddish tone, which was combined with either a brown, or a green (this type was the most common). These pictures became known generically as benizuri-e (red-printed picture), and the example we have here was designed by Ishikawa Toyonobu.

It's quite a puzzle to me just why they kept to such a restriction. After all, once you have worked out how to put multiple colours on a print, why not go all out and create full-colour prints? I suppose it was basically economic factors; more colours means more expense, and the print business seems to have been a very competitive one. And given that the 'target' market for the prints was the general populace, and not well-off upper classes, costs must have been a major consideration.

The person we see in this image is the kabuki actor Nakamura Kiyosaburo (readily identified by the actor's crest visible in the picture). He was a renowned onnagata (actor playing female parts) and this scene was one of his most famous roles, in which an actor takes on the disguise of a roaming street musician. The 'back story' - which theatre-goers of the day were no doubt completely familiar with - involved itinerant musicians who had traditionally toured rural areas to assist in the work of chasing birds and animals from the fields, a custom that had over time been absorbed into festival dances of various types.

So what we have here is a Canadian printmaker reproducing a design by a Japanese artist of a male kabuki actor impersonating a female festival dancer playing the part of an itinerant musician ...

Got that?

David

May 2010