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Ichikawa Omezō as Tomita Hyōtarō and Ōtani Oniji III as Ukiyo Tohei.
Omezō, kneeling at the right, has on a blue kimono with under kimono of rose and pale blue. His obi is green and yellow and is bound with a purple sash. Oniji is in dark orange-brown with a black check, and green showing at the waist.
This is the first to be catalogued here of the series of superb designs which show two figures at full length against grounds of white mica. Only seven survive and five of these have to do with plays produced in the seventh month of 1794. The other two are connected with a production of the following month at the Kiri-za which may have been delayed as that theatre did not produce anything new in the month before. Shortly afterwards the edict against mica grounds went into effect; but the unpopularity of the series may be assumed from the extreme rarity of impressions, the fact that only seven subjects for it are known to have been designed and the general statement of a contemporary that the prints of Sharaku were not liked. At least that one of the seven subjects which now is under discussion certainly appeared in two editions, for the impression we exhibit differs in three ways from the one reproduced in the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 330, and rephotographed from it in Rumpf number 36 etc., as well as from the inscribed copy used by Kurth and others: The signature is at the left instead of at the right, the calligraphy in it differs, and the seals are differently cut.
The two impressions of the print in America are alike, and two others have been reproduced as indicated above.
Ōban. White mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
The Art Institute of Chicago (Buckingham Collection).
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