Hover to zoom or click for full-size image.
Keigetsu Kikuchi
The Heroine Koharu. c.1923.
- Category
- Japanese | Beauties
- Series
- Dai Chikamatsu Zenshu.
- Publisher
- Nishimura Komakichi
- Engraver
- Yamagishi Kazue.
large dai-oban, 28.8 cm × 43.0 cm
Very good impression, embellished with silver. Very good colour and condition.
A tragic story of unrequited love, with the double suicide (shinju) of Kamiya Jihei, a paper merchant and Kinokuniya Koharu, a courtesan from the Kita-Shinchi pleasure quarter. The pull between obligation (giri) and the emotions of unrequited love (ninjo) would provide a theatrical pathos on the Kabuki stage. Koharu, holding a pipe, muses over her predicament. Her true love to the married Jihei can only be realised through death and subsequent Buddhist re-incarnation.
Signed Keigetsu. ref: Page 94 Newland, Amy R.; and S. Hamanaka, "The Female Image: 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties", Leiden: Hotei, 2000
£480