Kunimasu: Nakamura Utaemon IV as Tattooed Danshichi Kurobei 団七九郎兵衛

Artist: Utagawa Sadamasu (Kunimasu) 歌川貞升 (active 1830-1852)

Date: 1850

Bold and confident portrait of the kabuki superstar Utaemon IV, arms folded, forearms bearing the character’s famous tattoos. Danshichi was based on a real person, a fishmonger who killed another man in 1697. The event was dramatized just a year later, and then 50 years later the character became the hero of the play  “Natsu Matsuri Naniwa Kagami” in 1745; it is still part of the current kabuki repertoire. This play contains the most famous murder scene in kabuki--the scene when Danshichi murders his evil father-in-law Giheiji during a summer festival in Osaka. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has this same print in their collection, and they write that little is known about the artist Kunimasu except that he seems to have been born into wealth, became a student of Utagawa Kunisada in Edo, and then returned to Osaka to sponsor ukiyo-e print production.

Most ukiyo-e portrayals of Danshichi seem to focus on the famous murder scene; this one may be set in an earlier scene in the play, as he famously ends up mostly naked and washing the blood and mud off of his body after the murder. Here he looks very composed and put together, and his anger has not yet inflamed him to commit the crime. This portrait makes clear why his character was celebrated as heroic, the archetype of the otokodate, one who stands up against injustice and protects the weak as an everyday hero.

Condition: Excellent impression and color; very good condition. Backed, with one small fingernail scratch in the upper background.

Dimensions: 25 x 18.4 cm (chuban) Signed: Kunimasu

Literature: See the British Museum for the complete diptych (2016,3062.2). See the National Museum of Scotland.

SKU: OSA060