Ōtani Oniji III as the Yakko Edobei

The manservant Edobei at the instant before violence — shoulders hunched, fingers splayed, mouth pulled down — from the play The Colored Reins of a Loving Wife (Koi nyōbō somewake tazuna). In the fifth month of 1794 the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō released twenty-eight portraits like this by an artist no one had heard of; ten months and some 140 designs later Sharaku stopped, and no one has ever established who he was. The hands are too small and the grimace too honest — Sharaku printed what actors actually looked like mid-role, not the flattery they paid for, against a black mica ground that still reads as stage darkness. Caught one breath before the crime.

Maker

Tōshūsai Sharaku

Date

1794

Medium of the original

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00404