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Kobayashi Ikuhide. - [Uenokoen F sen no Zu].

 1560675160,
Tokyo, Sakai Kinzaburo, January1891 (Meiji 24). Colour woodcut 36x24cm. At sometime mounted on tissue with what was probably a hinge on the right edge. A nice bright copy. ¶ The brightest, busiest and most impossible of the Ueno Park balloon prints. Aeronaut Percival Spencer, of the Spencer aeronautic dynasty, came to Japan in 1890 with his balloons and parachutes, performing his balloon ascent and parachute descent stunts in Yokohama and in Ueno Park in Tokyo in November 1890. He is said to have injured himself slightly having to avoid the royal tent during a command performance. Tokyo went balloon mad - again, they had a craze years earlier - and Spencer's performance was made into a Kabuki dance play - Fusen Nori Uwasa Takadono (Riding the Famous Hot-Air Balloon, see Brandon; Kabuki Plays on Stage) by premier dramatist Kawatake Mokuami - which ran for a month in early 1891. The Kabuki star Kikugoro V (who played the demon princess in the 1899 film Momijigari) played Spencer with waxed moustache, hat and learnt a short speech in English for the finale. I think all the other balloon prints of Spencer in action are actually Kikugoro in action and this fantasia is also a theatre print: those are actors' names on the balloons. We might think of this as an advertisement for the play that had begun, or was about to begin, its run. But front and centre is the name of Ichikawa Danjuro, who shared the top rung of the star ladder - but not this play - with Kikugoro and I can't see Kikugoro's name anywhere.
AUD 1150.00 [Appr.: EURO 701 US$ 752.05 | £UK 584.5 | JP¥ 115900] Book number 11214

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