Toshusai Sharaku's Actor Prints and His Mysterious Disappearance: The Mica-Background Shock and the Ten-Month Enigma
In May 1794, outside the Nihonbashi publishing house of Tsutaya Juzaburo, an unknown artist named Toshusai Sharaku put a new kind of print on sale. Against luxurious dark mica grounds (kuro-kirazuri), twenty-eight large-head portraits (okubi-e) showed kabuki actors mid-performance, with bulging eyes, hooked noses and claw-like hands.
Traditional actor prints beautified stage idols. Sharaku exaggerated grimaces, age and psychological tension with unsparing realism. Edo audiences were baffled, actors reportedly outraged and connoisseurs mesmerized. After about 140 prints in roughly ten months, Sharaku vanished, leaving one of art history’s most enduring enigmas.
Realism Over Flattery
Among the first 28 portraits, Otani Oniji III as the Servant Edobei is a global icon. It shows a ruthless henchman about to rob a traveler, with splayed claw-like fingers, an aggressive frown and theatrical red makeup, capturing a moment of electric malice.
His portraits of onnagata, male actors specializing in female roles, were just as radical. Rather than masking masculine features, Sharaku depicted thick necks, strong jawlines and maturity. Contemporary fans criticized this, but today it can be read as a sharp observation of the paradox at the heart of kabuki.
Tsutaya Juzaburo’s Gamble
Behind Sharaku stood the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo, who also promoted Utamaro and others. Under the austerity censorship of the Kansei Reforms, Tsutaya is said to have staked heavily on these lavish mica prints.
The commercial reaction was reportedly harsh: many theatergoers found the caricatures grotesque. In later series the expensive mica backgrounds were dropped in favor of full-figure compositions, and the original tension is often said to have faded.
Ten Months, 142 Prints, and a Vanishing
By early 1795 Sharaku had stopped publishing entirely. In about ten months he had produced 142 prints. An old chronicle, the Ukiyo-e Ruiko, offers only a brief note: that he depicted kabuki actors, strove so hard for truth that his works were disliked, and stopped within a year or two; commonly known as Saito Jurobei of Hatchobori, a Noh actor serving the Awa lord.
This sparked generations of speculation, with Hokusai, Utamaro, Tsutaya himself and others proposed as the real hand.
Saito Jurobei: A Noh Actor’s Legacy
Archival research in the 1990s confirmed the historical existence of Saito Jurobei (1763–1820), a Noh actor in the service of the Tokushima domain. This is now the leading identification, though some scholars remain cautious. As a samurai trained in the austere mask theater of Noh, he would have had the detached, analytical eye needed to dissect kabuki mannerisms.
Reappraised in the early 20th century by European critics, notably Julius Kurth, who compared him with great portraitists of the West, Sharaku’s realism still looks far ahead of its time.
Color the Beauty of Edo
The Mori no Akari Series offers an oiran (courtesan) coloring set with color samples as a download edition, inspired by the graceful world of Edo prints. The product name in the store appears in Japanese.
▶ View the Oiran Coloring Set 01 (Download Edition)
Related Reading
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi: Giant Skeletons, Heroes and Satire
- Hokusai and the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji
References
- Asano Shugo, Sharaku no Ukiyo-e, Shogakukan, 2002
- Uchida Chizuko, Sharaku-ko, San-ichi Shobo, 1993
- Julius Kurth, Sharaku (Japanese translation), Misuzu Shobo, 1994
- Tokyo National Museum, ed., Special Exhibition: Sharaku, 2011