Page:The Surviving Works of Sharaku (1939).djvu/22

 Vol. VI, number 2, October 1928, which reproduces from it a map entitled “Yamatoye-shi no nazukushi”—“A collection of the names of those skillful in Japanese painting.” This map includes some thirty-eight artists of the Ukiyoye school ranging in time from Moronobu to Hokusai. It shows a central “island continent” composed of seven artists (Moronobu, Toyonobu, Shigenaga, Harunobu, etc.) surrounded by “main-lands” marked with the names of the Torii school, the Katsukawa school, etc. Sharaku is shown as an independent island lying between the central group and the mainland reserved for the Utagawa school. It may be added that another separate island lying immediately to the “north” of Sharaku is marked “Kitagawa Utamaro.” This in itself is proof that his importance was recognized in his own time—at least by some of his contemporaries.

It is known that the Lords of Awa—the Hachisuka family—kept Nō dancers in Edo and that the city residence of the Hachisuka retainers was at the place where the contemporary manuscript, quoted above, says that Sharaku lived. At the request of the compilers of this catalogue the present Marquis Hachisuka has had the archives of his family freshly searched, but no new references to Sharaku under any of his supposed names have been found. Those who wish to read the unconfirmed and frequently discredited theories and conjectures about him which have been set forth in the past may do so either in Rumpf or in the various Japanese books and articles on Sharaku which have appeared during the last few years.

It is known that someone who signed himself Sharaku, or Tōshūsai Sharaku, designed 136 prints impressions of which survive, and at least a few others which, although they do not exist now, may be assumed confidently to have existed because they were necessary to complete triptychs or pentaptychs parts of which remain. It is known also and through absolutely contemporary evidence, that this man’s name in private life was Saitō Jūrōbei or possibly Jirōbei, that he was a Nō dancer in the service of the Hachisuka family and that he lived with their other retainers at a given address in Edo. Beyond this there are one or two statements that cannot be confirmed and various conjectures no one of which has enough to support it to warrant repetition here. What little is actually known we have stated. The rest is silence; but the work that the man did grows in fame and reputation year after year, and we will devote the next paragraphs of this introduction to a brief historical account of the