The Actor Ichikawa Komazo II as Soga no Juro Sukenari Disguised as a Fox Trapper in the Play Kagami-ga-ike Omokage Soga, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the First Month, 1770

Ippitsusai Buncho designed this hosoban kabuki actor print to record a New Year production at the Nakamura Theater in Edo, where Ichikawa Komazo II appeared as Soga no Juro Sukenari disguised as a fox trapper in the play Kagami-ga-ike Omokage Soga. The work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Soga Juro is the elder of the two Soga brothers, central figures in one of the most recurrent narrative cycles of Edo kabuki, and a New Year production featuring his story was a standard part of the Edo theatrical calendar. Buncho's career as one of the leading designers of yakusha-e in the late 1760s and early 1770s placed him in the middle of this annual cycle of revenge plays, romances, and dance pieces, and his hosoban prints supplied an Edo public eager for images of named performers. The composition centers Komazo II in his disguise, with the costume's textile patterns and the props of his assumed identity worked out in careful detail across the slim vertical sheet. The print belongs to a generation of Edo ukiyo-e that established many of the conventions of modern actor portraiture: a single figure foregrounded against a minimal background, observed facial features rather than masklike idealization, and inscribed identification of role, play, theater, and month. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves these features and supports continued scholarship on Buncho's documentation of the Edo stage.