The Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Tsunewaka-maru in the Play Iro Moyo Aoyagi Soga, Performed at the Nakamura Theater in the Second Month, 1775

This hosoban actor print by Ippitsusai Buncho, in the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Tsunewaka-maru in the play Iro Moyo Aoyagi Soga, performed at the Nakamura Theater in the second month of 1775. The dating places the work toward the very end of Buncho's recorded activity in Edo ukiyo-e, by which point the broader market for yakusha-e was increasingly dominated by Katsukawa Shunsho and his school. The play belongs to the Soga revenge cycle, with the title's reference to colored patterns and willows aligning it with the spring-season productions in which the Soga story was traditionally restaged. Buncho's design centers Monnosuke II in the slim hosoban format, with costume patterns and pose carrying the burden of identification for both actor and role. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the inscribed identifications that allow modern viewers to align the image with a specific production season. Ichikawa Monnosuke II was a leading Edo kabuki actor in male roles of the period, and Buncho's portrait of him captures the visual conventions of mid-Edo actor prints at the threshold of the Katsukawa-dominated decade that followed. The work contributes to the museum's broader holdings of Edo kabuki documentation through prints.