One of Japan's greatest mysteries is the true identity of the ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Toshusai Sharaku, whose entire career was crammed into a 10-month period from 1794 to 1795, during which he produced 145 separate print sheets.
With practically no reliable biographical information about the artist, various theories have sprung up. One suggests that he was a Noh actor called Saito Jurobei, another that he was the renowned Katsushika Hokusai using another name. One even proposes that he wasn't a single person but rather a group of artists temporarily brought together by the publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo — who according to yet another theory may also have been Sharaku.
Perhaps a fear that such theories might detract from the art has led the Tokyo National Museum, in this comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work, to make the assumption that Sharaku was a distinct individual with a unique artistic identity. Rather than getting embroiled in biographical conundrums, the exhibition prefers to approach the artist in the only way we can truly know him — through his art, with 142 of his works brought together alongside dozens of prints by contemporaries, rivals and a few successors. As the exhibition catalogue optimistically puts it, "This exhibition seeks an understanding of the basis of Sharaku's creative genius, clarification of his formal expression and artistic characteristics, and confirmation of his oeuvre."