Actors & Kabuki

Tokyo, 1880s. The gaslights are lit, the crowd is pushing toward the playhouse, and the print seller already has the new actor portraits drying on his line. These are Japanese kabuki woodblock prints of the 1860s to the 1890s: yakusha-e, actor portraits and full theater scenes from the late Edo and Meiji stage.

Nakamura Shikan appears in role as samurai, lover, Tokyo fireman and ghostly priest. There are the Soga revenge plays, the duel of Atsumori and Kumagai, Lady Onoe, tattooed men with drawn swords, the Satsuma Rebellion, shamisen and flute players, audiences filing in. Bold outlines, the aniline reds and purples of the Meiji years, heavy blacks. They carry across a room. Hang them in a run along a hallway and the whole house gets an intermission.