Yakusha-e

Yakusha-e (役者絵), often referred to as "actor prints" in English, are Japanese woodblock prints or, rarely, paintings, of kabuki actors, particularly those done in the ukiyo-e style popular through the Edo period (1603–1867) and into the beginnings of the 20th century. Most strictly, the term yakusha-e refers solely to portraits of individual artists (or sometimes pairs, as seen in this work by Sharaku). However, prints of kabuki scenes and of other elements of the world of the theater are very closely related, and were more often than not produced and sold alongside portraits.

Ukiyo-e images were almost exclusively images of urban life; the vast majority that were not landscapes were devoted to depicting courtesans, sumo, or kabuki.

Realistic detail, inscriptions, the availability of playbills from the period, and a number of other resources have allowed many prints to be analyzed and identified in great detail. Scholars have been able to identify the subjects of many prints down to not only the play, roles, and actors portrayed, but often the theater, year, month, and even day of the month as well.

Over the course of the Edo period, as ukiyo-e as a whole developed and changed as a genre, yakusha-e went through a number of changes as well. Many prints, particularly earlier ones, depict actors generically, and very plainly, showing in a sense their true natures as actors merely playing at roles. Many other prints, meanwhile, take something of the opposite tack; they show kabuki actors and scenes very elaborately, intentionally obscuring the distinction between a play and the actual events it seeks to evoke.

Only a few artists were innovative enough to stand apart from the masses, creating works more distinctive in style. These artists, beginning with Katsukawa Shunshō, depicted actors elaborately and idealistically, but with the realistic details of individualized faces. Individual actors, such as Ichikawa Danjūrō V, can now be recognized across roles and even as depicted by different artists.

Torii Kiyonobu (1664–1729) was likely one of the first to produce actor prints in the mainstream ukiyo-e style. An artist from the Torii school which painted theater signboards, Kiyonobu was no stranger to the theater or to artistic depictions of it. In 1700, he published a book of full-length portraits of Edo kabuki actors in various roles. Though he took much, stylistically, from the Torii school style as a whole, there are significant elements of his style that were innovative and new. His dramatic forms would guide the core of ukiyo-e style for the next eighty years. It is possible that his prints may have even affected kabuki itself, as actors sought to match their performances to the dramatic, bombastic, and intense poses of the art.

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