Museum Collection

Crossed eyes and bitten hair are a sign of concentrated passion, in this conflict between a fierce samurai and an agitated woman, played by an onnagata-that is, by a male actor who impersonates women. The samurai is in Kabuki makeup. Note the effect of blindprinting on the kimono, where the uninked woodblock creates texture through embossing on the plain paper. The psychological and cultural division between men and women in Japanese art and society could be extreme-and their desperately tender conjunction equally extreme. Many Kunisada prints are an inspired advertisement for Kabuki theatre, which expressed the heroically erotic and erotically heroic fantasies of the common people in an authoritarian age. Conflict between men and women in Japanese prints may be a question of rank as much as gender. Yet, as in ancient Greek and Hebrew literature, the power of women was revealed in art and literature whatever its concealment in society. Is such revelation patriarchal hypocrisy-or psychological truth manifest through melodrama? Whatever the ideology of the moment, women and men are overwhelmingly real. Even melodrama cannot exaggerate the beautifully mad vitality of their relationship.