The Actor Arashi Rikaku II as Isogai Tōsuke, from the series Lives of Men who Carried Out Revenge for Loyalty or Filial Piety

This 1848 Metropolitan Museum of Art vertical chuban print by Hasegawa Sadanobu I depicts Arashi Rikaku II as Isogai Tosuke in a print belonging to the series Lives of Men who Carried Out Revenge for Loyalty or Filial Piety — a moralizing series title that allowed Osaka designers to circulate actor portraits in the years immediately after the Tempo Reforms had nominally restricted such publication. The series-framing as biographies of historical revenge avengers provided a cover for what audiences recognized as straightforward actor portraits, and the format demonstrates the institutional sophistication that Osaka publishers brought to navigating Tokugawa-era censorship. The vertical chuban format places this print within the standard Osaka size and style of late-1840s kamigata-e, where Sadanobu, Konishi Hirosada, and their contemporaries produced thousands of designs in the same compact format. Accessioned in 2011 as part of the Charles A. Greenfield bequest of Osaka prints (2011.148), the work expands the Met's documentation of Sadanobu's mature actor portraiture.