Syllable YO 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 depicts a scene from the drama Yotsuya kaidan and portrays the actors Ichikawa Kodanji IV as Iemon with an umbrella and Onoe Kikugorō IV as Oiwa. Iemon, an umbrella producer, is a character called iroaku, a seductive criminal. Although he has a beautiful wife called Oiwa, he wants to marry Oume, a rich girl from next door, to re-acquire his lost samurai prestige. He poisons his wife with a potion, which makes her lose her hair and transforms her into a monster with bulging eyes. The avenging ghost of Oiwa eventually thwarts Iemon’s planned marriage. (See Helena Honcoopová, Kunisada, Praha 2005, p. 216)