Scene from the play “Soga Pattern in Date Colours”

The earliest Utagawa Kunisada yakusha-e woodblock print from the Latvian National Museum of Art colletion dates back to 1815. It portrays the same actor with whom Kunisada began his career in theatre scene depictions – the actor Nakamura Utaemon III fighting an enormous rat. The actor in the role of Arajishi Otokonosuke, who guarded Tsuruchiyo, the son of daimyō Yorikane in Ashikaga Castle, attempts to kill the monster with a fan and a sword. The rest of the drama depicts the failure of the warrior, as the rat shape had been assumed by an insidious nemesis Nikki Danjō who had used magic to persecute his master.