22
Bandō Zenji as Onisadobō, a Namazu-bōzu, or priest who looks like a catfish, and Sawamura Yodogorō II as Kawatsura Hōgen, in the episode called Yoshitsune Senbon-Zakura which was played as the finale after Koinyōbō Somewake Tazuna in the performance at the Kawarazaki-za in the fifth month of 1794.
Yodogorō, on the right, is dressed mainly in green and purple; Zenji, on the left, in black, yellow and rose.
Some Japanese collector of the long ago has written on the print the name Bandō Zenkō and as, according to a book by Jippensha Ikku published in 1803, Bandō Zenji began using Zenkō as his “poetry name” when he took the stage name of Bandō Hikozayemon in 1801, the inscription could not have been written before the last mentioned date.
There is another state of the print which shows many variations in the blocks, two of the most obvious of which are that in it one of the fingers in the outstretched hand of the figure on the left is doubled over and the line inside the sleeve of the actor on the right extends upward to his wrist. The subject is reproduced in the state shown here from an impression formerly in the Camondo Collection and now in the Louvre, in the Louvre Catalogue, number 36, and by Benesch, color plate number 1. Another impression in the same state is reproduced in the sale catalogue of the Collection of M.C. … (Chavarse) Paris 1922. The three impressions found in America are all of this state and it may be noted that the one in the Louvre also has a hand-written inscription which unlike that on the print we show gives the name of the actor appearing with Yodogorō as Bandō Zenji, not Zenkō. For the other state see the following number.
Ōban. Dark mica ground. Signed: Tōshūsai Sharaku.
Ledoux Collection.
98
