Page:The Surviving Works of Sharaku (1939).djvu/314

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ortrait of the famous fat boy Daidōzan Bungorō showing his strength.

In the preceding number we saw the same prodigy of corpulence and power in the wrestling ring. Here we have him alone and dressed in what has been described as a bathrobe with black and yellow stripes. The text above gives his age, weight, girth etc.; but exciting as he was to the public and to the print makers of the time, all we feel called on to record here is that he appears in the print at the age of seven and that considerably before then his father had presented a petition for financial help in feeding him. The measurements and the statement of age given in the print fix its date as at the beginning of 1795.

We have rephotographed from the Vignier-Inada Catalogue, number 250, an impression now in the Matsukata Collection, which seems to be the same one reproduced as Rumpf number 42 and by Noguchi. Kurth uses another.

Ōban. Described as on yellow ground. Signed: Sharaku.