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Overview
A vivid sense of high drama and intensely expressive theatricality, frozen in a single moment, is conveyed in the full-figure portraits of Japanese printmaker Hasegawa Sadanobu III (1881-1963). Sadanobu lived and worked in Ōsaka, a city with its own thriving theatre world and associated print industry, and was third in a long line of printmakers.
This print was published by Uchida, of Kyōto. Sadanobu depicts the leading character of the play Shirabaku, Kamakura Gongoro Kagemasa, at the most dramatic moment, as he strides on the stage and calls Shirabaku! – Wait a Moment! The actor Ichikawa Danjūrō X (known also as Ichikawa Sanshō V) is recognisable from his dramatic costume, a deep red-brown robe, and mon (emblem) of three concentric squares. The design, based on nested rice measuring boxes, is called mimasu or sanshō. The synthesis of old and new that informed the distinctive stylisations of Taishō and Shōwa era designers is more overt in Sadanobu’s works than in those of his traditionally more highly-regarded contemporary Natori Shunsen (1886-1960), who is also represented in Te Papa's collection. The conventional – a play first performed in 1697, distinctive costume, kumadori make-up, and karazuri – finds a comfortable partnership with the overlapping planar geometries and shallow pictorial space of modernist idioms. Like Shunsen’s prints, those of Sadanobu found a ready market with the occupation forces. As the print dealers Artelino claim on their website: ‘The artist shows his subject in a style that obviously caters for a foreign market with a kind of Disneyland image’.
Sources:
Artelino, 'Sadanobu Hasegawa III', https://www.artelino.com/articles/sadanobu-hasegawa-III.asp
David Bell, 'A new vision: modern Japanese prints from the Heriot Collection', Tuhinga, 31 (2020), forthcoming.
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019