Arashi Rikan II as Osome

Arashi Rikan II as Osome is an ukiyo-e woodblock print by Osaka print artist (1802 – 1853). It depicts late Edo period kabuki actor, Arashi Rikan II as the lead female character in a scene from a popular play of the period. The print belongs to the permanent collection of the Prince Takamado Gallery of Japanese Art in the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada.

Print details

Medium: woodblock print; ink and colour on paper Format: tate-e vertical print Genre: kabuki-e, yakusha-e Japanese title: Exhibit title: Actor Arashi Rikan II as Osome Inscription: none Signature: in bottom right corner Publisher's mark: 天喜 (Tenki) Publisher's seal: 天 (Tenki) Censor seal: none Date seal: none Credit line: none

Artist

(1802/3–1853) was born in Nagasaki, Kyushu. He moved to Osaka around 1820, and began studying under (fl. c.1815-1841),The British Museum dates his activity to c.1816-1835, Oxford Reference to c.1821-1841, and Ujlaki to c.1821-1841. then (1787–1832). He published his first print in 1820 under the name , and used various gō throughout his career. He took the name Ryūsai Shigeharu in 1825. He worked in various media including single-sheet prints, book illustration, theater billboards and programs, and painting.Lyon 2013 He was active during the period c.1820-1849, and prints signed Kunishige and Shigeharu from 1849 on are likely the work of other artists.Lyon 2013

Although contemporary accounts characterize him as "good at everything" and "better than the rest,"Lyon 2013 modern critics have described him as "an indifferent artist".Roberts 1980, 145 This notwithstanding, Shigeharu was, if not the only professional ukiyo-e artist working in Osaka in the late nineteenth-century, one of the very few on the amateur-dominated art scene.Davis 2007, 18

Publisher

The print displays the publisher's mark associated with Tenki. The seal is a stylized version of the character 天 (ten) contained within a circle. This appears directly above the full characters for .Newland 2005, 561 Operating under the firm name , Tenki, or as it was also known, was active from 1816 into the 1850s.Keyes and Mizushima 1973, 311 The Tenki seal version appearing in this print was used from 1826 to 1838.Vegder

Medium and genre

Ryūsai Shigeharu spent most, if not all, of his productive years in Osaka, and as such his works are categorized as . This term was used to distinguish prints produced in the Kamigata region (Kyoto and Osaka) from those produced in Edo.JAANUS, "Kamigata-e" Gaining prominence about a century after the appearance of ukiyo-e in Edo,Kitagawa 2005, 229 kamigata-e belonged mainly to the kabuki-e genre (images of kabuki actors), and were almost entirely the work of non-professional “talented kabuki fans” celebrating their heroes.Kitagawa 2005, 230 Shigeharu was a rare exception to this rule.Davis 2007, 18

Format

The image is a vertical single-sheet print. As the print depicts one half of the romantic duo in a famous love story, and as the signatures, seals and inscriptions are all located on the extreme right of the print, it may have been the right-side half of a diptych.

Subject In this print, Arashi Rikan II is depicted as Osome, heroine of (The Love of Osome and Hisamatsu). Originally written for the puppet theatre, it was adapted for the kabuki stage in 1782.Shōriya 2013 It is one of several dramas recounting the tragic true story of two star-crossed lovers who committed double-suicide in 1710, one the daughter of a merchant, the other, her father's apprentice.Brandon and Leiter 2002, 64 Osome was a popular subject for yakusha-e artists and often depicted wearing a kimono decorated with hemp flowers.Newland 2005, 479

Rikan II appeared in this role at Osaka's Kado theatre in the ninth lunar month of 1830,Shōriya 2013 and it is likely that this print was completed in celebration of this performance. He reprised the role at the Kitagawa theatre in the eleventh lunar month of 1832, which was memorialized in a print by Shunbaisai Hokuei.Shōriya 2013

Description

Osome appears in a moment of tension. It is night and she is leaving the grounds of her home. In contrast with the complete darkness of the house behind her, she carries a lit lantern and wears a dark but colourful patterned kimono. Beyond the figure of Osome herself, there is very little detail. The ground is made up of yellow horizontal lines on a brown background, and the sky is coloured with the bokashi technique of colour gradation, darkening from light grey to black as it reaches the top edge of the print. Osome looks up to her left with an uneasy facial expression, her gaze resting somewhere beyond the right border of the print.

Related works

Arashi Rikan II as Osome

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