Standing paralyzed on the edge of a boat is Shirai Gompachi, who only moments before pierced his throat with a sword. The blood running all over his body creates a strong contrast between the light colour of his skin, the dark night background, the sapphire coloured water and the dark red blood that draws one’s immediate attention in this gruesome yet beautiful image. Shirai Gompachi was a 17th century samurai who became enamored with a courtesan, killed a number of people, and was eventually executed by the shogunal authorities. In the Kabuki production of the story, however, Shirai Gompachi is able to retain his honour and commits suicide on a boat before his capture. In this nishiki-e (colour print) the actor being portrayed is Onoe Kikugoro III of Osaka, playing the role of Shirai Gompachi from Ume No Hatsuharu Gojusantsûgi, translated as the Fifty-three stages of the Plum Tree’s Journey.

Famous real-life suicides in the Edo period (1603-1867) were often followed by extreme public interest and were followed by the writing and publishing of popular plays and prints. Kabuki plays and Kabuki related prints, both sewamono (plays dealing with the lives of contemporary commoners) and jidaimono (historical dramas), commonly depicted suicides. These plays and prints varied in the suicides they depicted, ranging from shinjûmono (plays about lovers’ double suicides) to honour suicides, such as the one of Gompachi. This particular 1848 nishiki-e is by the Osaka artist Konishi Hirosada (1810-1864). Hirosada’s print of Gompachi is a fine example of more explicitly gruesome prints which became more popular towards the mid-nineteenth century. The depiction of Gompachi’s suicide is a less common topic for nishiki-e compared, for example, to Enya Hangan’s suicide in the play Kanadehon Chushingura, which perhaps features the most famous suicide scene in Kabuki in Act Four. However few images of suicide scenes from Kabuki plays convey desperation and loneliness with the same intensity as does this depiction of Gompachi by Hirosada. A man of high rank would traditionally commit seppuku (suicide by a ritualistic form of disembowelment). Slitting one’s wrists or cutting one’s jugular vein with a dagger by slitting or piercing one’s throat was known as jigai and was mainly performed by high ranking women. Samurai would only ever slit their veins following the act of seppuku; the act of jidai alone would have been shameful and effeminate. For commoners, on the other hand, no prescribed form of suicide existed, hence the use of varied methods in shinjûmono, such as drowning, hanging and stabbing. Gompachi, on the other hand, was a fallen samurai whose execution by the authorities would have been the ultimate dishonor. Thus alone and in desperation, perhaps unable to commit seppuku, he pierces his throat with his long sword.
In the Edo period this print would have played roughly the same role as a collectable movie poster today. It was an image of someone’s favorite Kabuki actor, some of whom attained “pop star” status, particularly in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and Osaka. It was also a piece of memorabilia from a play that someone had seen, a physical reminder of one’s favorite Kabuki play perhaps. No doubt that the Osakaites who bought and gazed at Hirosada’s print, escaped for a few moments from their everyday surroundings and were transported, either back to the Kabuki theatre or to the eerily romantic site of the tragic scene.

The suicide of Shirai Gompachi from Ume No Hatsuharu Gojusantsûgi. Nishiki-e by Konishi Hirosada, 1848.

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