Posthumous portrait of Onoe Kikugorō IV - shini-e

Shini-e commemorative woodcuts were a Japanese form of commemorating outstanding but also very popular artists. Their conventional form and the predominance of weaker authors of these graphics, as well as the rushed production, resulted in the low quality of most shini-e. However, it is worth emphasizing that the world of Japanese ukiyo-e created a genre that was a form of tribute paid to outstanding people of low social status, and the level of graphics by the best artists can certainly be described as high. The rush of publishers to press for lower-rated graphic designers often resulted in the unfinished, raw look of shini-e. This sloppy workmanship, however, gave shini-e a bad reputation. Only those of the mourning woodcuts by famous artists are worth noticing. Among the creators of shini-e were also such famous figures from the world of ukiyo-e as Utagawa Kunisada and Utagawa Kuniyoshi. The author - Utagawa Kunisada - was a propagator of this type of performances, as was Utagawa Kuniyoshi, a colleague from Utagawa Toyokuni's studio. Both the above-mentioned artists and their students made dozens of graphics of this type. The decline of shini-e occurred around the 37th year of the Meiji era (1905), with the death of three great stars of that period: Ichikawa Danjūrō ​​IX, Onoe Kikugorō V and Ichikawa Sandanji I. Although mournful graphics were also published then, but ukiyo-e itself was already inferior to such media as photography and lithography. The woodcut depicts Onoe Kikugorō IV. The actor came from Osaka, but he married into a prestigious acting family from Edo and therefore moved to the capital. He mainly played female onnagata roles. Onoe Kikugorō IV was depicted in the graphic as an onnagata, wearing a black monk's robe and holding a Buddhist rosary in his right hand. The artwork is signed: Ōju Ichiyosai Toyokuni hitsu. In the upper right corner there is the date of death: 1 year Man'en (1860) 6 month 28 day and the name of the temple where he was buried: Imado Kouraku-ji.