Natori Shunsen - Ichikawa Sadanji II as Marubashi Chuya, from the series Supplement to the Collection of Shunsen Portraits
Natori Shunsen’s wood block portrait of Kabuki actor Ichikawa Sadanji II depicts him in his famous role as 17th-century samurai hero Marubashi Chuya and is from the series Supplement to the Collection of Shunsen Portraits by Natori Shunsen of 1931. The artist’s subject and presentation pay homage to Kabuki Theater, considerably one of the greatest artistic movements, and to Japanese heroes.
Natori Shunsen was born Natori Yoshinosuke in 1886. His development and training as a professional artist were heavily influenced by political changes of his day including the decline of the Meiji Period, the start of the Taishō Imperial Era, and the Shōwa Period during which he created this portrait of Ichikawa Sadanji II. He witnessed his nation’s push for modernization and was eighteen when Japan defeated Russia, surprising the world with its rapid industrialization and militarization. Yet there was little desire to supplant Japanese culture. One campaign pushed by the Meiji government was “Japanese Spirit, Western Learning.”1 Shinto religion believes the Gods created Japan to be the first nation. Nationalists are not just loyal to their culture; they believe it to be superior to all else. Globalization showed the Japanese they had fallen behind. Modernization had caught them up, but at the risk of diluting and changing their culture. Artists were working to become advanced in their technology, technique and presentation, without sacrificing the purity of the form and message. The best and the brightest of Shunsen’s generation were traveling to Europe to study their ways and bring it back to Japan, including Ichikawa Sadanji II, who traveled to study Western theater.2
While much was changing around him, Shunsen’s artist training was far more traditional. Beginning at age eleven, he studied Nihonga-style painting under Kubota Beisen. Many professions in Japan grant a new name once the worker has mastered his craft, so after maturing, Natori chose to change his surname to Shunsen as a tribute to his teacher. After mastering traditional aesthetics, art history, and other subjects, he studied under Hirafuku Hyakusui, who perfected his mastery of Nihonga, but also began introducing European and American methods. Shunsen enjoyed these new techniques and joined “The Voiceless Society,” a group of young Japanese artists intrigued by naturalism and Western styles. Ironically the style that made him famous was one that was incredibly traditional, and yet also a departure from the establishment in response to the popularity of Western art.3
Connoisseurs in the West tremendously enjoyed Japanese woodblock prints.4 Publishers saw an opportunity and released prints prolifically, making them a relatively inexpensive way to collect pieces showcasing Japan’s styles, subjects and techniques. Due to the push for modernization, woodblock had fallen out of favor in the Meiji period and was considered “low” art.5 In Japan, the commissioned prints were fine art during the heyday of the Katsukawa School, but by the 20th Century were regarded as cheap souvenirs.6
To preserve the art form, woodblock enthusiasts began painting, transferring, carving, and printing their own work. When you purchased one of these works it was not a copy of a piece of art, it was an original creation. In response to demands from the West for prints, another approach developed: the Shin-Hanga. This group was far more interested in quality. It shifted management for the art from the painter to the publisher. Printers began contracting with artists to make original images, and then with woodcarvers to make the highest quality woodblocks. They would use the highest quality inks, papers and printing technologies to make the best print possible. This was actually a return to an older approach to printing, but ironically inspired by a response to modernity.7
Publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō, who is credited by some as founding Shin-Hanga, recognized that artists who would be most in demand by print collectors would be those skilled at creating art for modern tastes in the traditional Japanese styles.8 Collectors did not want Japanese interpretations of Western trends, nor did they want Japanese antiques. They wanted art they liked, in the traditional Japanese style.9 In this pre-World War II Imperial setting Nationalism ran high. Japanese collectors believed their country’s artistic tradition was superior to anything in the West. But they were also fans and collectors. They craved the new. They supported innovation in art of all kinds with their pocket books. The woodblock prints from the bygone era Shōzaburō recalled were often of icons of popular culture, including images of the Kabuki Theater.10 The all-male casts portrayed heroism, criminality, legends, and histories with not a little innuendo. The theater was often restricted and regulated by the government, which felt it was a bad influence on popular culture, but it was incredibly popular. In fact, Kabuki Theater inspired popular art, including paintings and prints, from at least the mid-18th century.11 As such, depictions of Kabuki and its stars were a well-established art form by the time Watanabe Shōzaburō contracted the rising talents such as Natori Shunsen in the 1920s and 1930s.
The request fit well with Shunsen’s personal tastes. Although a fan of Western styles, he was not a fan of Western culture. He was frustrated by his contemporaries’ pursuits of jazz, movies, and American and European fashion. He was a lover of Japanese styles and strongly supported Kabuki Theater as a superior art form. Coincidentally, the post-World War I era was a good one for Kabuki Theater, when many of Shunsen’s countrymen felt the same attraction to the old-style made new with modern stagecraft, costume design, makeup and interpretations of texts.12
Shunshen quickly developed a reputation for his ability to capture the actor’s essence, rather than just the realism of the particular scene the actor was performing. This was appreciated because Kabuki gives actors limited opportunities to express the motives and personality of their characters. Thus an actor’s essence is generally what endears them to fans that love to see how they’ll interpret the next character in the next play.13 His skill at this was so recognized he was often commissioned to recreate an entire city’s cast. Individual actors would collect his prints of their likeness and Kabuki fans would subscribe to his series.14
Ichikawa Sadanji II, our subject, was the son of a great actor, which is why he attached the II to his name. He inherited a theater from his father and was able to afford study in Europe. He was one of the leading innovators in Kabuki’s 20th-century renaissance. Some fans even referred to him as the “president” of Kabuki Theater.15 It is thus fitting he is the subject of Natori Shunsen’s famous print from the series. Shunsen is doing more than pay homage to his generation’s greatest actor; he pays homage to what he considers Japan’s greatest art form, the finest work he and Shōzaburō could produce in their own practices. It is a celebration of modern, contemporary Japan while simultaneously the product of the best Japan has ever produced.
The influence of the Katsukawa School is particularly noticeable in Shunsen’s choice of bright colors, fine lines portraying facial features, details in hair, and intricate folds in clothing. But whereas the older style’s use of color is to embellish, adorn and decorate, Shunsen’s use of color is deliberate and crafty to direct the eyes around his picture. The color in the face of Marubashi Chuya draws the viewer’s eyes to the subject’s eyes, and then down his face the way water trickles down a rock, eventually dripping onto the beautiful clothing and positioned hand. The hand holds a toothpick reminding the viewer he is a samurai. The idiom "a samurai will use a toothpick even when he has not eaten" speaks to the pride of the profession. One generally walks around with a toothpick in the mouth only after a large meal. Perpetually carrying a toothpick suggests one is eating handsomely.
Whereas the Katsukawa School’s depiction of actors makes the makeup, surroundings and costume look natural, the coloring in Shunsen’s faces is obviously makeup and in a few portraits you can see the string holding the wig. The costumes and “sets” depicted are more Broadway than peasant harvest festival or high-end brothel entertainment. It is Shunsen’s realism and naturalism in the face that makes his work stand out. Whereas eyes in the Katsukawa School were often nothing more than a dot and a line, or perhaps a dot inside an almond-shape, Shunsen’s eyes are piercing. The portraits genuinely look as if someone cut out the eyes and is staring through the holes at the viewer. Slight shading of color contrasts the eyes against the makeup on the face making them “pop.” Indeed, color in the older style’s actors was simple lines of makeup. Shunsen turns the print into a mirror giving the impression the viewer is a mirror the actor is staring into inspecting their bright, red lips, dark brows and pink outlines around the eyes.
All of this realism means the viewer can identify Ichikawa Sadanji II behind his portrayal of Marubashi Chuya. The fine lines used to create details in the fingers, toes, and clothing of the older school are used by Shunsen to give intricate definition to the nose, wrinkles in the forehead, shape of the chin and contours of the lips. Whereas all noses, mouths and chins looked roughly similar in the Katsukawa School, each of Shunsen’s faces is unique and full of expression. Mournful nobility, bold masculinity, female vulnerability and crafty old age are all conveyed in the faces. The proportion of the faces and shoulders in Ichikawa Sadanji II as Marubashi Chuya and the rest of the series are highly modern. The Katsukawa School was primarily concerned with depicting a scene like in a postcard and Shunsen was creating portraits of actors projecting characters.
In Ichikawa Sadanji II as Marubashi Chuya the actor is standing in front of a stage painting of a castle and moat. Realistic three-dimensional depth was included in many works in the Katsukawa School. Making the background multiple shades of light gray and two-dimensional was an obvious choice to suggest a setting, not portray it. The actor’s age is not hidden: there are bags around the eyes and sagging skin under the chin. The colors are dark giving the portrait a somber tone. The proportions of the face within the canvas draw the eyes first to the eyebrows, then the makeup-underneath the eyes. These eye features give the man a look of dignity, character and strength. The lines around the nose and mouth pull the eye to the toothpick. Numerous portraits by Shunsen feature bright, red lips. The light pink coloring is a conscious decision to not draw attention. There are no props or pieces of jewelry to distract the eyes. This is no ordinary portrait of a Kabuki actor; it is a portrait of the “president of Kabuki Theater” projecting one of the nation’s strongest characters. Shunshen had more compelling portraits, but none are arguably more representative of the artistic statement his career, and his publisher, were trying to make.
Natalie Kirk
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1Folan, Lucie, Chiaki Ajioka, Melanie Eastbur, C Andrew Gerstle, Robyn Maxwell, and Amy Reigle Newland. Stars of the Tokyo Stage: Natori Shunsen's Kabuki Actor Prints. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2012: 22.
2Ibid., 22.
3Ibid., 28.
4Brown, Kendall H., and Russell Panczenko. Color Woodcut International: Japan, Britain, and America in the Early Twentieth Century. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2007: 9.
5Ibid., 13.
6Ibid., 12.
7Ibid., 13-14.
8Folan, et al., Stars of the Tokyo Stage, 10.
9Brown, Panczenko., Color Woodcut International, 21.
10Folan, et al., 28-29.
11Ibid., 17.
12Ibid., 18.
13Clark, Timothy. The Actor’s Image: Print Makers of the Katsukawa School. Art Institute of Chicago in association with Princeton University Press, 1994: 13.
14"Natori Shunsen." The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 62, no. 1 (2014): 95,96.
15Folan, et al., 128.