The Actor Ishikawa Danjuro V Performing a Shibaroku Act with a Drawn Sword in His Handca. 1781
The great actor Ichikawa Danjūrō V strikes a pose with a drawn sword in Shibaraku, the bombastic role in which a hero bursts onto the stage crying “Wait a moment” to rescue the innocent. More about this work
About this work
The great actor Ichikawa Danjūrō V strikes a pose with a drawn sword in Shibaraku, the bombastic role in which a hero bursts onto the stage crying “Wait a moment” to rescue the innocent. The part belonged to the Danjūrō line of actors, who performed it in a vast persimmon-coloured costume bearing their family crest of three nested squares. Katsukawa Shunshō pioneered actor prints that captured real performers’ faces rather than generic types, and his images of Danjūrō V were especially popular with theatre fans in Edo.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Colour woodblock print
- In Japan these were a team effort. The artist drew the design, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one block for each colour, and a printer brushed on the pigment and rubbed each sheet by hand. Full-colour prints of this kind were called nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”, from the 1760s on.
Katsukawa Shunshō
Japanese, 1726–1792
Shunshō founded the Katsukawa school and changed the way kabuki actors were portrayed, giving them recognisable individual features rather than standard types. From the late 1760s his actor designs, often in the narrow hosoban format, dominated the field. He was also a refined painter of beautiful women, and the young Hokusai spent his early years in his studio under the name Shunrō.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Ukiyo-e
Japanese woodblock prints of the floating world: actors, courtesans, landscapes and the sea.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- JP1298
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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