Utagawa Toyokuni - Actor Onoe Matsunosuke II
This Ukiyo-e is a depiction of kabuki actor Onoe Matsunosuke II. The man is rolling up his sleeves while glaring menacingly at the mice/rats. He's about to open a can of whoop ass. He has seriously had it with these vermin. His clothing billows around him as if his rage is producing a physical current around his body. The mice don't even seem to notice as they continue to provoke him by prancing around happily like the oblivious little shits they are. Perhaps they know and actually enjoy enraging this poor man. They think it's funny. Utagawa does a wonderful job of displaying the frustration of the actor while keeping with the tradition of kabuki since the picture captures the comedy in the theater as the mice dance around as if toying with him. I find it very interesting that the only color used was the soft reddish-pink of the Matsunosuke's clothing. One's focus is also immediately drawn to the mice at the bottom since they are almost completely filled in with black. The bold mice against the soft flowing fabric of his clothes provide a nice balance in the photo that also goes hand in hand with the darkness of his obi and hair. I was attracted to this photo by that very aspect--I found the simplicity very appealing, as it seemed to subtly combine the traditional black and white only prints with a tiny modern twist to brighten it up.
Unlike Kiyomasu Torii's "Goro Uprooting a Bamboo" ukiyo-e, which also depicted kabuki theater actor, Utagawa's work seems to take on a far more realistic approach to representing actors in action. The actor looks completely human, depicting the actor themselves as opposed to the character the actor was trying to portray, like Goro and his red skin and bulging muscles. While I found a lot of information about Kiyomasu's piece, I was unable to get any search results with this particular piece. Regardless, I was determined to do an analysis because the more I looked at this print the more I enjoyed it.
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