Male Dancer

The male dancer paintings from the early genre paintings depict a male dancer with eboshi (a formal headwear for court nobles), sword and go-hei a bundle of stripped papers. This dancing style incorporates a ritual dance performed at Kashima Shrine in Hitachi Province (present Ibaraki Prefecture). From the simple depiction of the figure and the thick perfunctory coloring, this work is probably that of a machi-eshi (local artist unaffiliated with any particular school who produced pictures for sale in shops).