Syllable CHŌ from the series Collected Seven Variations of the Kana Syllabary (Nanatsu iroha shūi)

With the series of syllables from the Japanese syllabary iroha in seven calligraphic variants, Kunisada returned to the popular series of stations on the Tōkaidō Road and scenes with one hundred poets. The series Seven Variations of Syllabary Characters (Seisho nanatsu iroha) has a similar typographic design with a decorative heading and a loosely-following illustration composed in a square with a direct link to kabuki theatre. The National Gallery Prague houses 32 sheets from the original series of 47 syllables (some in duplicate) selected from two albums. After the great success of this cycle, Kunisada published a continuation of this series of theatre scenes, which were sorted by syllabary characters or by the characters of the iroha poem (Nanatsu iroha shūi). This print shows a scene from the drama The Rich Man’s Coins and a portrait of the actor Ichikawa Danjūrō VIII as the samurai Sanshichi Nobutaka with his horse. The composition is simple and telling. It is a scene from the drama about a poor samurai, who, when hungry, cuts his favourite horse into pieces onstage. Needless to say, a real horse was used in this scene called Killing a Horse on the Yamato Bridge (Yamatobashi umagiri), as kabuki theatre had a very bombastic character. (See Helena Honcoopová, Kunisada, Praha 2005, pp. 210 and 211)