Comment - Harimaze-e are woodblock prints featuring multiple small scenes, originally intended to be cut apart and pasted into albums or applied to screens. The inset at top left shows a pipe, tobacco pouch, and pipe case alongside a sign. This handsome harimaze-e example includes two fan designs with kabuki characters. The upper right design shows the young samurai Endō Morito (1139–1203), who mistakenly killed the object of his love, Kesa-gozen. He became a monk and took the name Mongaku. As a penance for his crime, he decided to stand for 21 days under the icy waterfall at Mount Nachi. The fan design at center left depicts the treacherous ferryman Tombei beating a drum to sound the alarm for gettng hold of refugees.
Bottom right contains another fan design. A woman flies a blue coloured Yakko ("yakko-dako", "奴凧") or man kite, with a kite spool in her left hand. Her mouth agape as it seems to be the yakko is staring back at her from the sky.

The title (not read) is within the black cassette between the upper cut-outs. The artist's seal is presumably "Ichiyûsai Kuniyoshi ga", but the lower left fan design, regarding the style, is pesumably made by Kuniyoshis disciple Kyosai.


Series - none


Artist - Unknown artist


Signature - presumably "Ichiyûsai Kuniyoshi ga" (一勇斎国芳画); with red kiri seal of Kuniyoshi and his school


Publisher - Yamaguchi-ya Tōbei (上山ロ) as publisher's seal; circular censor's and date-seal atop publisher's seal


Image Size - 24.8 X 35.6 cm (  9 3/4" x 14") + margins as shown


Condition - single sheet; nishiki-e (harimaze-e), (cloured woodblock); vertical ôban (ôban tate-e, harimaze-e);