Torii Kiyomitsu I 鳥居清満

These prints depict Segawa Kikunojō I, Kikunojō II, and Kikunojō III, famous onnagata (女方), or actors who portrayed legendary beauties and heroines in the Kabuki theater of the 1700s and early 1800s. Onnagata set trends and broke boundaries beyond the theather. Kikunojō I was said to have lived like a woman, imbuing his performance with realism; Kikunojō II was so popular, fashion items were named after him; and Kikunojō III, said to have excelled in courtesan roles, had cosmetics branded after him. The actors appear here dressed as women, their hair arranged according to the latest styles of the day. For many Japanese people, they symbolized the pinnacle of femininity and womanhood.

Segawa Kikunojo II was a famed female impersonator (onnagata) on the kabuki stage. The two columns of inscription in the upper right give his name and that of his role. The remainder of the text is a poem.

The actor’s costume is decorated with skeins of cotton thread, a repetition of the pattern of his black-and-white identifying crest. He plays Princess Usuyuki, who is carrying sheaves of rice to which children’s toys are attached: a pinwheel, drums, and a toy trumpet. Written for the print, the verse reads: “So many kinds of love amid the autumn fields!” Autumn is the season in which rice is harvested, but it is impossible to tell whether the love interest in the unsigned poem is the woman in the picture, her lover, the handsome young actor himself, or all three. The significance of the toys is also unknown, as no copy now exists of the libretto for this play, probably a pantomime with chanted accompaniment.

Segawa Kikunojo II (1741-73, active under this name 1756-72) was renowned for his skill in playing female roles (onnagata). Since women were banned from kabuki theater from the seventeenth century on, certain actors such as this one learned to specialize in female roles. This type of print is known in Japanese as benizuri-e ("red-print picture") because it is printed with a limited number of color blocks, one of which is always red (beni); such prints were made in the mid-seventeenth century, before full-blown "brocade pictures" (nishiki-e) were developed.