Wikipedia
Tōshūsai Sharaku (; active 1794–1795) was a Japanese ukiyo-e print designer, known for his portraits of kabuki actors. Neither his true name nor the dates of his birth or death are known. His active career as a woodblock artist spanned ten months; his prolific work met disapproval and his output came to an end as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun. His work has come to be considered some of the greatest in the ukiyo-e genre.
Primarily portraits of kabuki actors, Sharaku's compositions emphasize poses of dynamism and energy, and display a realism unusual for prints of the time—contemporaries such as Utamaro represented their subjects with an idealized beauty, while Sharaku did not shy from showing unflattering details. This was not to the tastes of the public, and the enigmatic artist's production ceased in the first month of 1795. His mastery of the medium with no apparent apprenticeship has drawn much speculation, and researchers have long attempted to discover his true identity—some suggesting he was an obscure poet, others a Noh actor, or even the ukiyo-e master Hokusai.
is a seinen manga by Go Nagai. It's a Japanese historical fiction manga. The protagonist name, Sharaku, is a reference to Toshusai Sharaku, a famous Japanese woodblock printer. The existing tankōbon doesn't include the 34 pages special Naniwa - Kanjo no "Koi" , published in Weekly Morning #2·3 (2002).
Sharaku is a 1995 Japanese drama film directed by Masahiro Shinoda. It was entered into the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.