and villains, and the contemporary domestic drama (sewamono) with its intrigues of love, comedy, mystery and vendetta. Schools of actors would specialize in certain types of roles. Actors belonging to a particular family would display the family crest (mon) on their garments, and they usually appear so identified in the prints. Almost from the very beginning, parts were played by male actors only, as it was felt by the government that female actors and dancers would tend to lower the morality of the people. Consequently certain families or schools of actors specialized in female roles (onnagata) while others, such as the Ichikawa school, trained actors mainly for male roles.

Designing actor prints continued to occupy Toyokuni throughout the last decade of the 18th century and into the first years of the 19th century. Influenced no doubt by Sharaku's great success with the bust portrait, Toyokuni produced a number of fine designs against light and dark gray backgrounds for various publishers including Uemura, Tsuruya, Kinsuke and Yamaguchiya Chusuke. Chusuke was also publishing Eisho's large bust portraits of courtesans using mica backgrounds at the same time. Toyokuni's portraits lack the quality of line and psychological power found in those of Sharaku, but they contribute a sense of realism to the natural flatness of the woodcut image, thus giving the figures a disquieting ambiguity. Toyokuni did a succession of prints from about 1796 showing two companion actors in half and full-length figures. The scenes were always moments of great emotional intensity in the play, when the actors were shown to best advantage in their most characteristic roles. Typical of designs from this period is a scene of the actors Otani Hiroemon III with a scroll in hand and Ichikawa Danjuro V in an undisclosed play. The fact that a play is not mentioned in the design would seem to indicate that the actors in their roles were well known to the theater-going public and that the print appeared concurrently with the production. (see illustration 4)

Playwrights, authors, and artists alike used the teeming life of Edo for inspiration. They frequented the Yoshiwara, the festivals, and the Kabuki theater for subjects the people loved: stories about themselves, current fads and fashions, and events with which they could identify. The writer Shikitei Samba, author of two volumes entitled 'Actors in the Third Storey', illustrated by Toyokuni and published by Nishimiya Shinroku in February 1801, relates in his epilogue, "From early morning, when the first strains of music are played by the orchestra, I sit close in front of the stage, regardless of being splashed by water and mud [from the stage] and content to bend my knees in a narrow seat and wash down a few bean-jam buns with tea sipped from a single cup. My friend Mr. Toyokuni is a man of the same kidney; but he sits high up in the third storey sketching while I sit low down in the pit gazing at the actors and doing nothing. We are, nevertheless, of the same taste; he paints while I write."

illustration 4

(Click here to continue)