【Entertainment Material Regular Delivery】Unraveling "Goraku Sekai," Featuring Color Frontispieces from the Taisho to Early Showa Periods, and Eihō Hirezaki - Art Exhibition Navi x National Theatre Collaboration Series Vol. 24
This installment explores the early Taisho to Showa period storybook "Goraku Sekai" and the color frontispiece artist Eihō Hirezaki, based on National Theatre collection materials.Summary
The National Theatre, which strives to collect and utilize performing arts-related materials since its opening in 1966, introduces a highlight from its collection monthly in the "Entertainment Material Regular Delivery" series, a collaboration with Art Exhibition Navi. The 24th installment focuses on the entertainment storybook ("sokkihon") "Goraku Sekai" published from the Taisho to early Showa periods, and the frontispiece artist Eihō Hirezaki (1880–1968), who illustrated many of its color frontispieces. Sokkihon are books recording spoken performances like *kōdan* or *rakugo*, and frontispieces are full-color prints inserted at the beginning of these books or novels. The National Theatre holds 28 volumes of "Goraku Sekai," a significant collection. Hirezaki, a disciple of Toshiei Utada and rooted in the Utagawa school, specialized in *bijinga* (pictures of beautiful women) and illustrated frontispieces for various magazines. The article specifically analyzes the frontispiece used for the flyer of a past exhibition, which depicts a scene from the ghost story "Nogi no Kaidan" published in the first issue of the fifth year of "Goraku Sekai" (January 1917). This illustration captures the distressed young woman Ohama and the persistent monk Kanzan, helping readers visualize the characters described in the text. The article concludes by encouraging readers to explore the National Theatre's extensive collection of storybooks and frontispieces.
(Source：美術展ナビ)