Kitano Tsunetomi (1880-1947 )
Meiboku Sendai Hagi 1918
(Ichikawa Danjurō as Arajishi Otokonosuke and Matsumoto Kōshirō as Nikki Danjō)
Signed: Tsunetomi hitsu
Sealed: Yosamean Tsunetomi
Pair of hanging scrolls: ink and color on silk
47 x 11 inches (120 x 28cm) each
Tomobako signed Tsunetomi
Exhibited:
Tokyo Station Gallery, Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, Shiga, 2003
Published:
Hashizume Setsuya, Kitano Tsunetomi ten (Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 2003), pl. 25.
Ichikawa Danjurō (1838-1903) was one of the most successful kabuki actors of the Meiji period. The ninth in the lineage of actors to hold the illustrious name, he was credited with invigorating and sustaining the kabuki tradition during the challenging period of modernization and change. Among the roles he popularized was Arajishi Otokonosuke, the hero of a play titled Meiboku Sendai Hagi which was inspired by the seventeenth-century political strife within the Date clan of Sendai. Tsunetomi’s diptych represents Danjurō on the right, opposite Matsumoto Koshirō’s Nikki Danjō, the arch villain of the story. In 1917, the kabuki world organized a special event to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of Danjurō’s death. It is likely that an avid kabuki fan commissioned Tsunetomi, who was also known to enjoy the theater, to paint this subject at that time.
In the diptych, Tsunetomi maximizes the possibility presented by the format itself. Juxtaposing the two figures in the diagonally facing corners and contrasting them in mood and appearance, he highlights a tense moment of the drama. Danjurō’s character, eye-catching with his colorful facial expression and costume, is ready to spring into action against his nemesis, who appears subdued in color and shrouded in the cloud of his magical mist. Capturing the essence of the confrontation in an imaginative composition, Tsunetomi presents here a modernized rendition of long-established ukiyoe theme through his sharp design.
Born in Kanazawa and trained as an engraver for newspaper printing, Kitano Tsunetomi moved to Osaka at the age of eighteen and studied with Ineno Toshitsune. After working as a successful newspaper illustrator, he changed careers and became a nihonga artist. His regular participation in national exhibitions began when his painting was accepted to the Bunten in 1910. Many awards followed and soon Tsunetomi gained national recognition for his highly sensual bijinga (paintings of beautiful women). The unusual degree of realism Tsunetomi achieved in his early Taishō works is thought to reflect his study of Western-style oil painting at the end of the Meiji period. In 1917, Tsunetomi became a member of the acclaimed Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsuin) and gradually abandoned his earlier approach for a more introspective expression. One of the earliest nihonga artists from Osaka to attain national stature, he became a respected leader of the Osaka painting circle and nurtured a great number of the next generation of local artists, including Nakamura Teii and Shima Seien.
Tsunetomi’s works are in the collection of Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Yamagata Art Museum, and Kinoshita Museum, among others.
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