Onoe Kikugorō I as Izumi no Saburō in the Play Snowflakes: Plum Blossoms Kaomise

In this Ippitsusai Buncho hosoban print, held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Edo kabuki actor Onoe Kikugoro I appears as Izumi no Saburo in a kaomise production whose title is rendered by the museum as Snowflakes: Plum Blossoms Kaomise. The kaomise, or face-showing, performances opened the new theatrical year in Edo in the eleventh lunar month, introducing the actors contracted to each of the major theaters for the season ahead. Izumi no Saburo, a name drawn from the Oshu Fujiwara lineage, places the role within the medieval warrior subject matter that recurred across Edo kabuki. Onoe Kikugoro I was a prominent male-role specialist of the period, and Buncho's hosoban design uses the slim vertical sheet to set the actor's full standing figure against a minimal ground, with costume and pose carrying both the role and the likeness. The print exemplifies Buncho's contribution to yakusha-e or kabuki actor prints during his short but productive career in the late 1760s and early 1770s, when Edo ukiyo-e was consolidating the practice of named-actor portraiture. Outside the Art Institute of Chicago, which holds the largest concentration of his work in the United States, the Cleveland Museum of Art's impression demonstrates how Buncho prints have entered major museum collections as primary documents of Edo theater.